Page 35 of What Rough Beast

I burrow deeper,

Curl around myself.

Keep the dark center

Safe from the world.

Suddenly, her avatar lights up with the green dot. She’s online.

I started our last conversation by telling her how much I liked one of her poems, so that’s not an option. I’m wondering how to start this time when my phone vibrates—she messaged me.

burnedoutgirl: How are you? And don’t say fine, because you’re not.

burnedoutgirl: I mean, I’m guessing you’re not. If you’re having an awesome day you should say so.

averageamericanmale: I’m totally not fine, thank you for asking.

burnedoutgirl: lol

burnedoutgirl: What’s up?

If I tell her I’m afraid Jerkoff Dropbox might get busted, we’ll be done chatting faster than when Murphy issued the warning that his little sister was off-limits. As a child, my instinct was to lie, to double down when I was caught and bluff it out when I was wrong. Now that I’m older, I’ve adopted a slightly different technique. Tell the truth—but only the parts I want to share.

averageamericanmale: Just anxiety running wild. Even if everything is okay, my brain wants to find a problem.

burnedoutgirl: Yeah, my therapist told me about that. It’s your brain trying to protect you, but it goes into overdrive because it doesn’t believe you’re ever safe. So even if you are, it’s still looking for a threat.

averageamericanmale: You do it too?

burnedoutgirl: No. All the times I’ve never been safe were very, very real.

burnedoutgirl: But it sounds terrible.

averageamericanmale: It is.

averageamericanmale: I’m always scared.

I stare at those three words. I don’t think I’ve ever said them, and certainly never written them down. I’m not even sure that I knew it until just now.

averageamericanmale: And that is not something a guy is allowed to be.

burnedoutgirl: Ha, unattractive is something a girl is not allowed to be.

averageamericanmale: If you are, you don’t show it, and sure as hell don’t say so, and there’s no fucking way you’re talking to anyone about it.

burnedoutgirl: You’re talking to me

averageamericanmale: That’s different

burnedoutgirl: I know

I feel like she does know. And not just that she knows I’m safe talking to her because we’re strangers. It’s an all-encompassing I know. She knows about the parts of me—the real Micah Harding—that nobody else does.

burnedoutgirl: Ask you something?

averageamericanmale: Yeah

burnedoutgirl: When’s the last time you cried in public?