Eleven days after your funeral.
I suppose this was the start.
My therapist asked me to come on Tuesday and I was expecting—I don't know, maybe another useless sessions, but when I saw her outside her office, she was grinning widely at the sight of me. “Roo! I thought—well, it doesn't matter what I thought. Are you ready?”
I wasn't sure what I was supposed to be ready of, but I nodded anyway.
What I should be ready about, apparently, was a semi-open group meet-up. She brought me to a coffee shop I had never been before. There were about twenty people inside, ranging from teen to complete adult around their thirties. Some of them brought papers, some just chatted with each other, some others kept to themselves. In front of the dim-lit room was a stage. I looked at my therapist, unsure, but she just smiled and told me I wouldn't need to talk today, just to listen.
“But, Dr. Quintana—”
“I'll be just Claire for today, Roo. I hope you don't mind.”
“Okay… Claire, but what is this?”
She grinned at me. Her smile was so youthful and happy I couldn't imagine the time she had ever been in my place in life. A person started talking on the microphone, bringing everyone to laughter. I couldn't hear what the person say, because the next second my therapist told me, “This, Roo, is slam poetry.”
I didn't get to ask more. The MC person recognized my therapist and asked her to come up the stage. I was struck speechless when she did. Despite every of our impulsive and reckless activities over the years, Sam, you'd know that I wasn't reacting well to surprises—that is to say I would open and close my mouth a lot like a goldfish, which I did.
I sat down to the nearest vacant seat before a man right beside me asked, “First time coming here, huh?”
“I—yeah....”
He smirked wildly. I noticed a piece of paper in his hand. “We'll absolutely blow your mind.”
Right then, Claire started reading her poem about daughters left behind by the swerve of wheels on icy road, her voice was loud and clear, her eyes sparked full of energy and emotions, and my mind was irrevocably blown.
Later when we were on our way back to her office, I asked her, “Is it always like that?”
She gave me a smile like she knew. “What do you mean?”
“The slam-poetry gathering. I don't know. Overwhelming.”
I felt drawn to her laughter and I smiled because I think that's how I am, Sam, how I will always be. I'll be happy when other people are. She said, “Yes. You think you want to come to another one?”
I didn't have to think about it. “Yes.”
“Think you want to bring your own to read out loud?”
This time I hesitated. Almost everyone there wrote a poem about someone or something they'd lost. I knew for some people it would feel extremely depressing but I saw the way they looked after they finished reading and it was relief all over their faces. “I'll try.”
My words rang inside me like a prayer. I'll try. I'll try. I'll try. They sounded wretched like forgiveness I didn't deserve.
YOU ARE READING
Wearing My Smile | ✔
Teen Fiction"I wondered if you'd ever thought that the name your parents had given you felt like sharp knife twisting through your heart in its prayer. I'd never asked you that before, now I'd never get to." Having been together since forever, Roo struggles in...
