I came home.
I heated meals I barely tasted.
I let the television fill the rooms with noise so I didn’t have to listen to how quiet everything really was.
My sister called every Sunday.
Friends tried to drag me back into the world.
Nothing reached the hollow place inside me.
Emma’s drawings stayed on the refrigerator long after the paper curled at the corners.
I couldn’t take them down.
Because taking them down felt like agreeing she was never coming back.
Years passed like that.
Not lived.
Endured.
Then one rainy afternoon, I found myself sitting in the parking lot of an orphanage telling myself a lie I needed in order to walk through the door:
I’m just looking.
Read more on the next page ⬇️⬇️⬇️
