Nina Papadopoulos
Preschool.
That was when we met.
My pigtails pulled too tight,
And your hair cut too short.
Our sisters already best friends,
Us instinctively making the same choice.
Little did little me know,
She’d grow up to regret it.
Naïve, I was to think
Your jokes about my flaws were funny.
The jokes that caused my deepest insecurities.
“Stop singing, you’re tone deaf.”
I don’t even sing “Happy Birthday” anymore.
“You have weird toes.”
Socks at every sleepover.
“You don’t even talk to him.”
No more sharing secrets.
A serious injury every other year;
Dislocations to stitches to broken bones.
Permanent scars left for everyone’s eyes,
Yet the invisible scars of your words
Are the ones that are the deepest.
Mid-quarantine held our sophomore year.
A ghost in the October air possessing me to snap.
Months without talking.
Shared apologies in April.
Now, we’re “friends” again but
You mock my dreams,
Silence my trauma,
Roll eyes at my music taste,
And make me feel inferior to everyone on the planet.
Your friends imitating your words,
Creating a mockery of me,
A version that is pure fiction.
You no longer know me.
We grew to be strangers once again,
Just wiser ones than before.
Never once I’d think to thank a stranger,
But here we are.
Without your demeaning words,
I wouldn’t have learned to rise from the ashes.
So, I guess all that’s left to say is
Thanks for the gaslighting.