Page 172 of Poison Aches

suffer from a continuous dull pain.

You know that awful, visceral feeling you get when you desperately feel like you’re about to burst in tears, but you hold it in because you know crying is more humiliating than anything?

That feeling when your throat starts burning.

Your nose starts tingling.

Your vision blurs, and everything in front of you, around you, even within you, tilts out of focus.

Suddenly, nothing makes sense anymore.

You start feeling something acute and intense building in your chest.

Your fists clench tightly at your sides but still deep inside you, there’s a voice screaming at you to hold it in?

Don’t let the tears drop!

Don’t even let loose a sniffle or else you’ll unravel.

That’s how I feel in this moment and more.

There’s a constricting pain-like pressure in my chest, like an elephant has planted its big ass on there, weighing me down into the dirt..

And it’s all because of the words on the pages of a book I want to chuck away.

“Did you look it up?”

I stare at the words in the dictionary for a long time, unable to breathe right, let alone say a word.

I can feel the familiar firm gaze set right on me, as it always is when I do something to disappoint her.

I don’t usually do that—that’s reserved for my brother—but it seems when it comes to one specificpersonthat she’s warned me repeatedly against, I disappoint her over and over again.

“Well? Did you?” Grammy presses.

I refuse to look at her.

If I do, not only will I confirm the disappointment that I know I’ll find in her eyes, but I’ll also see something else that’s been present in her gaze almost all my life.

Pity.

Not just any kind of… ‘Oh, sorry you’re going through that, it’ll get better next time’ kind of pity. No. That kind is reserved for when our chatty and nosey neighbor comes over uninvited.

The kind of pity my grandmother has for me is the desolate kind.

The type that feels grim, dark, cold, and so damn miserable, it makes you tremble.

“Is this…” I stutter, then clear my throat. “Is this the new word you want me to learn?”

Silence falls over the room, but I’m pretty sure Grammy can hear the loud pounding of my heart as much as I can feel it almost knocking me down to the floor.

“Yes, Pumpkin,” she says in a soft but firm voice. “You’ve always loved reading all sorts of books since you were young. Your favorite thing was learning new words. Do you remember?”

I clutch the pages of the dictionary so tightly, I’m at risk of tearing the thing into a million pieces.

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