Vachon Imagined

“Aw, let’s not talk about that now,” he would say with his small acts of kindness, his manufactured perpetuities of joy after he had just fucked it up—after he had already spilled the dice of what she knew all along.

He was an asshole, a selfish prick, someone she never wanted to become because, well, that hurts.

Calm down, little lady. Don’t be so demanding. Don’t be so overwhelmed. Just take what I give you. Don’t demand more; don’t demand anything.

Be sweet. Talk in the gibberish little girls learn to survive, to get their way, to secure their prey. Don’t want too much. Don’t break too easily.

It was a dance she never figured out, born from a body that never learned the rules of loving too much but not enough—or loving so much that she alone became too much for him, and frankly, too much for herself.

So she went another way, never returning to the man who made her feel unsure, who made her feel afraid. She wandered into another desert while continuing along the same stream, only this time he wasn’t invited.

He wasn’t allowed.