Time to Leave
- by Constance Neeser
Everything that I write comes true. Everything about people.
My parents were the first people I truly hurt. They were abusive. I wrote, my father truly loves my mother. I wrote, my mother wishes only joy for her children. I hid the paper under their mattress.
They changed. He hit her harder. She phoned my university and interfered with my courses.
You will divorce your spouse within the year was straightforward, and I hope the separation was a blessing for them.
Everything I write comes true. Everything about others.
I orchestrate people — I am a manager and people dance to my tune. Like my parents, I don’t always foresee how someone’s behaviour will progress, will grow from the seed of my instruction in the soil of their mind. But I work the soil and pluck the weed — those around me bend their lives to me.
They feed me, clothe me, home me.
They come and go around me, meet each other, work together, become friends and enemies and lovers.
They’ve noticed. That their lives orbit me, in some way. They’ve noticed. I think they’re talking to one another.
My written word, my paper spells, they nudge people, shift them. But my people are interacting, and there are now so many of them: their behaviours are complicated webbed things.
When they look at me, I think I sense anger.
I think. I think, but I am scared. I think that it’s time to leave.