2019-06-21 - A Shadowed Corner (Dark, Implied Drug Use)

She's there almost every night. A child, a little girl, with light brown hair that has been braided into shoulder-length pigtails.

She looks like she's six or seven years old. No, it's six. Six and four days. Why do I lie to myself?

She looks kind of like I did, in the few pictures that Gram had from when I was a kid. Or maybe those were pictures of mom, in those old photo albums with peeling edges? It doesn't matter, really, because it's neither of us. Neither of us had black eyes.

Perhaps 'black eyes' is putting it too kindly. Where the child's eyes should be, there simply... isn't. There's no mouth, either, to say what we both know. What we all knew. Gram, mom, and me. And now her, wherever she is. If she is. She isn't a she at all. It's just the shape that I've given my nightmares.

It's guilt in that corner. Just like the needles on the bedside table, empty where they lay tangled among hand-made tourniquets. Wait, the needles are full again. Thank God. The prick of skin, a relief now, and the dim light begins to fade. The shadow of the corner fades. God fades.