Rosie Kaelen.
My name is not solely a word. It's meant to be something of a greater meaning than the combination of letters. But now, it seems that some pieces of it have been taken away; and only the parts that hurt are left behind.
The ink snakes its way across the paper in a jagged and mistaken fashion like a cry that got choked in my breeze. It seemed more like a scribble than a name-just lines wobbling where I couldn't keep my hand steady. The pen was moving like it had a mind of its own, like it was angry at me. I know that I held it too tightly, fearful of how it may respond to me. To me, it looked like it was making a sound more like a sign of doubt; like it was asking me: "Are you sure?"
I can't not feel the disorganized letters that are orbiting underneath the blinding lights of too-white lights. Everything is excessively symmetrical and overly beautiful.
Nurse Cooper, who was sitting next to me, spoke to me in a low and composed voice, as if she needed to learn to calm her breathing in order to survive in this place. "Release documents," that was it, and to be honest, it sounded like a command to me. It was almost like my signature was a spell that could magically restore me to my original state. I have to be ready. More so, I need to be better. I took care of all the worksheets and homework. I learned all the metaphors, how to draw circles around feelings, and so many more things. I told a stranger with a clipboard everything I had to say. Everything. Now they are saying that I am ready to go home. But I am still here. I am still not okay. I am still broken.
Because healing didn't need a visa. And it definitely didn't have a watch.
I mean, are pastel affirmations and fuchsia smiles really supposed to neutralize the flesh and blood of your ribs? The discharge room was like an air freezer now. It was my solid shadow. No matter how hard I tried, I wasn't able to escape it. It was there as if it was a clingy friend, refusing to leave me the fuck alone. Like it knew that I was not truly delivered. That terrifying type of silence could go to the core of everything somehow found its way into my veins.
No matter how flat I tried to make my palm on the counter, it pressed back and I couldn't help but notice the only real thing in this world is that cold, smooth metal that is located beneath my palm. It was a lot more real than those farewell messages that had been taking my mind captive like spirits. "You're doing great, Rosie." "To see that you've come this far." "You have every reason to be proud."
Nearly all of them were like the protective papers you use to cover a wound that does not want to heal. She was right next to me; the nurse. I forgot she was even there. The expression she bore on her face was like a tired old woman's. Not in age but in the burden she carried on her eyes. They were shiny but cloudy, like bright window half closed by the blinds. "Here is your completion, Rosie," she said softly. The sound of my name on her lips, a gentle exhalation of a sigh interlaced with a sweet melodious lullaby. "All done." All done. Done with the wheelchair therapy, where I spent all my strength trying to understand the real state of the world, and not to mention I felt no fucking ease in my shoulders. Done with those plastic feelings charts where I had to list my pain in alphabetical order. Done with metaphors that never expressed the real mess. Done with the idea that silence equaled safety. That watching was the same as seeing. Yet, I still took the paper from her hand. She was smiling at me, but it didn't reach her eyes. Maybe it did want to, but it got stuck somewhere on the way. It was as if the ends of her lips had been sewn together like one piece.
"Good luck, Little Kaelen." That name - Little Kaelen - was like a drop in the ocean for me. It was a marble, small and uninjured, that fell deep inside. Tiny and unimportant, but it had a ripple effect. Waves of feelings that breached my carefully-guarded emotional spaces. I nodded.
To her, a nod. To me, a whisper.
"Just take it one day at a time." The words were meant to help. I know they were. They were the same things that we all received, those of us who felt not quite at home in our own bodies. The crooked ones. The ones who were not 'Okay'. The ones who moved through the world as if they were echoes.
A few of us left all stitched up. They rest of us came undone as soon as we went out.
I gazed back at the corridor for the final time. It became a memory and not a passage anymore—expansive and white. The type of white that wipes out everything. No images. No timekeepers. Just walls that were pretending to be blind."One day at a time." I let this whisper escape from my mouth in the air, as if I was sharing a secret. Like prayer. The words faded into a mushy mess, like a pile of syllables that had been rubbed too hard. One movement of a breath; a habit. My only hope which was hand-stitched: the one that I could add to the phrase per worksheet. One day at a time. The other options would eat me from within.
I still remember when I was rushing all the time. Those times when I was only myself when I was moving fast. Days when I wrote hope in every place I could. In the margins of my textbooks. On the foggy mirrors. And once, on my thigh—with a Sharpie, not a blade. A word, as a candle, to keep you warm even if it burns you. But, the sticker is just a fantasized idea on broken glass. It's not hope; it's delusion. It's possible that it's even destructive. The door whispered behind me. Outside, the world was not waiting. Just continued as always—too loud and too bright. The sky was colorless like someone had spilled it out. Blue but empty. The sidewalk reflected the same. People were on the move. Cars were going on, too. Laughter was carried from a place I didn't understand. I stopped and the world didn't change at all. But, I was different. In the very depths of me. And, In the way my feet hit the ground like I had just landed from the moon. I walked on a pedestrian bridge like I had just been to hell and back, a place I had no right to be.
My Parents were right in front. Like shadows from a half-damaged polaroid which had its edges cracked, faded colors, and shades stored in an old forgotten wallet.
Amma is at the edge of the road. The sari she is wearing is too bright in the morning light. She has a bunch of blood-red roses in her hands. But the leaves that are there—screamingly green and disturbing. They were uttering things they shouldn't.
Pa is behind her, with his arms crossed, and his body too straight. He looks like he has been planted there by nature. His eyes don't see me at all; it's like he is reading a foreign weather report. Like he was the reporter for the damage I never remembered signing up for.
They were both looking at me in a way that seemed to suggest they were searching for the girl I used to be—hunting her in the static of old screens and broken pixels. They imagined she was still there, hiding in the glitchy edges. And they were wrong. Not exactly. But somewhat. Because I was not myself—not entirely. Sure, I was still me but I was a diluted, feather-like, version with moth-eaten edges. I have been so busy counting my imperfections that I started naming them. I told them tales. I thought of them as my little tokens, that I believed would save me. The boundary was blurred—they were over where I ended, and I was over where they began.
Even the sun changed. It kissed my face and I jerked. Not because it hurt but because it was so honest. It became a spotlight, and a confessional.
"Oh honey," Amma's voice was like a thread drawn from an old drawer – very fragile and a little shaky. Before I could be well prepared to stand against her—before I was able to fake it—she was already with me in her arms. The roses caught between us. Thorny branches were pushing into my ribs. She smelled like vanilla, maybe honey—or maybe it was just a ghost of it. Her hug wasn't a comfort. It was a test. Like she thought if she held me together, I'd snap back together. To allow her to hold me was like letting someone pick up a vase they didn't realize was cracked. Too tight and it'd break. Too loose, and it'd collapse anyway.
"You look great," she said, her voice cracking like an old record. "Thanks, Ma." My voice—smooth stones. Safe. "Are you ready to go back to the house?" "Yeah, I guess I am." I guess I am. The car was a half-shelter and a half-trap. We were silent. Not because we had nothing to discuss —but because the words were too heavy to lift. So, we just left them lying there, occupying all the space between us. The stale silence was packed with, every word we would use then, and everything we couldn't dare to say now. It had weight. It lived between our ribs. It tasted like metal. I came to a sudden realization that I was lost between two people who loved me but lost their way of showing And Maybe, their mistakes wasn't the issue. Maybe, I had torn the map myself.
The world outside the car window was a speeding movie. Everything around me seemed too bright and too sharp. The laughter was deafening like the outside world wouldn't even notice my absence. It even felt like the tram was teasing me for leaving. The kids on the sidewalk were running like soldiers, their shirts rippling as if they were flags. They were fighting over things that were invisible to me. The couples were walking slowly. Their fingers were just touching. Their knuckles were just brushing against each other. It was as if time was different for them because they were soft-hearted. In the back seat, the roses rocked in the wind rhythm of the car.
They were singing a ghost song through their petals—roses for the dead.
Cold pressed against my forehead. I leaned into the glass. Hard. Like if I pushed enough, I'd break through.
As we got closer to the neighborhood the air started to feel heavy. The buildings were like copies of each other. All of them had similar shutters and mailboxes. Like someone scanned them, and then copy-pasted them. The windows were not smiling. Instead, they were watching. They whispered something. What happened to the Kaelen girl?
Home was always the same. That irritating white paint. The swing set that was drooping like old bones. Clearly, it hadn't moved for years; no one had cared to take it down. It remained like that just as it was. A yard ghost. There was the sound of tires that crushed the gravel just like the sound of bones that crack.
"Welcome home, Rosie," amma said. She spoke in a whisper. I didn't reply. The entrance looked as if it was sparkling with the absence of grief. Every surface was shining and untouched. It was like the house had been waiting for a daughter who had gone on vacation, not the one who stayed for too long in the dark.
"I left everything just like it was."
But for which of me did she keep it for? The girl who was having fun wore socks while dancing on the kitchen floor and also singing into a wooden spoon? The girl who could picture a dragon in her mind helping her in writing a new life? Or just the one they put in a hospital that looked nowhere real, only with the slow drip of morphine?
A photo was on the stairs—Us. Three of us—moved by the wind, crooked-ginned, scraped knees, bandaged elbows and havoc hair, just like we had been through a storm. Cristina with her bright-colored popsicle on her chin. Natasha who wore her shoelaces around her wrist as a promise. And me—barefoot, sunburned, and laughing as if there was no end. I was like a kid who didn't think that softness had a time limit. That smile does not belong to me anymore. It's a ghost. A paper cutout. A mask for a girl who still didn't know that even safety can hurt.
My bag stood by the door, waiting for me. Not touched. Inside—paperwork that was sending disinfectant odors, gauze that had the smell of hopeless tries, a pill bottle that was sighing out guilt. I did not open it. I did not want to. Opening it meant to name the pieces. To claim them. To own them. So I floated away. No anchor. No map. Just moving to keep from drowning. The sitting room was exactly the same. Even worse like that. The couch drooped in the middle, like it was aware of my landing spot. The blanket that Amma crocheted when Pa was on chemotherapy—still a drape on the back. The edges were curled like something that overslept. It looked tired too.
Pa was not in the sitting room, which was the usual. He would hide away whenever the space became too thick for him. It was as if he wanted to disappear. The TV was constantly playing in the background—news, sports, old films that he did not even watch. It was just noise for him. He was not avoiding me. He simply didn't know how to be here. I didn't either.
I let my legs lead me upstairs instead of that big head of mine that surely did not know the way as good as them. The first step squeaked, the second step halted and then moved. My hand moved along the balustrade. It too had its fair share of the damage. Each jump seemed out of place, always louder than the previous one. The house could have been counting. The house could have been holding its breath. The hallway was narrower than before, and the brown wall seemed to come closer to me. It was the one that numbered all of the sluiced doors and muffled shouts hanging around. The hallway knew all the secrets. The door to my room was ajar. In the narrow gap, the light was showing a sharp cut, almost like a surgical one. A promise or a blade or both. I had no idea. Inside, I saw paper, dust, and ancient visions. The bed was tidy as a soldier with strict corners, Amma must have delivered a new hope in the shape of a new sheet. The poster of the dragon was still there but it has been almost faded. Now its wings fell off when it was forgetting how to fly. On my desk, I had the closed journal I didn't open. I didn't want to discover what the dreamer girl had written about. I just sat on the bed and time just flew by. No, it did not creak. This time it just stood like it wanted to say something to me. I wasn't even aware of the time I spent there. I was just sitting there until the beam of light changed direction.
I thought about the tale I started with aqua ink pen about a girl who tamed flames, she was also the one who fought monsters.I never finished the story. Maybe it was because I thought there was no need. I thought I was safe already. But, monsters are in a forest. They look like me. Using pills that do not belong to you, cutting themselves to feel better. I was the evil crafter. I let them in the door. Set the table. Went ahead with letting them eat me from the inside out. Called them family. The calm didn't come like a friend. Instead, it pressed down on me and flattened me. I felt like I had stones in my chest, thighs, and behind my knees. My body was like an old machine that lost its skill and became rusty.
I thought of fish that forgets the sky and lives too long underwater to know either air exists or not. They live a technical life, and they breathe but they forget about the flight. They're like me. I stood up but the closet door creaked open of its own accord. Like it had been waiting for me all this time. From the corner of the dark that smelled of musty old fabric I felt the presence of a smell that was not only in my nose it was in my spine too. I reached into the dark space and pulled out a hoodie.
The pink that once resembled bright bubblegum now the color of old erasers. Soft. I knew the feel of it before I even touched it. I used to wear it when my skin was like a static buzzer. The sleeves were chewed, frayed, like thoughts left too long in the dark. The neckline stretched like it had tried to make space for more than one kind of breath. I pulled it over me like a sentence I used to know how to finish. It didn't fit right anymore. The wrists were too short. The chest was too tight. But it remembered me. The fabric knew the shape I used to be. And that was enough. Familiar, like a password that was forgotten. Half safe, half itchy. Armor, stitched from the pieces of an old self. The world was turning outside. It always does. It is moving with or without you. It doesn't know that your heart is a skipping stone, that is never quite landing. Some people are standing still and calling it strength. Others are falling apart. I was standing somewhere in the middle-not strong, not collapsed-just paused.
Anyway, the mirror. It didn't betray me on purpose. It just reflected. Brown eyes, wide and empty like a room someone left in a rush with the drawers open and the pictures crooked. Shoulders bent in the inside curve, the posture of someone worn thin. The mouth was half-open like a sentence started many days ago but still stuck on the tongue. The scar on my neck caught the light, pink, raised. It was not angry but it spoke: I happened, you survived, and I am still here. My hand lifted before I could think. I touched the scar like I was tracing stars that were carved into old wood. My fingers traveled down my upper arm. I have older scars there. They are silver and flat, like the kind of scars that you don't hide anymore. Familiar. The new ones are still raw. They like to fight with the skin. Bandaged. Shy. Ashamed. They haven't decided yet if they are going to be secrets or stories, if they will harden into memories or stay soft forever. I didn't cry. Not at the mirror, not at the scar, not at the pink hoodie that used to fit me better. I just whispered the only question left: "What kind of bird forgets how to fly?"