Maybe her philtrum is intact. The skin between her nose and lip a gentle slope, leading to a rosebud smile. She could have nursed from her mother’s plump breast with a strong suck, no whistling holes in her cat’s mouth. At school, perhaps Dawn held hands with her at recess instead of luring her into the bathroom to give her a handful of shit while the other first grade girls howled.
She might have been the first kid chosen to play Four Square, her junior high desk groaning under the weight of thirty-eight Valentines. Maybe her friends would pick her up in their Volkswagen Rabbit and take her to see The Lost Boys. Maybe they would be people instead of cardboard and paper, waiting for her to open them, turn their pages, begin to read. Fall into Narnia, the Shire, cross the bridge to Terabithia again.
And no one would say, “What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your face?”
Every ring of her see-through phone is another invitation to another party where she dances in her neon sweater, drinking another can of beer. Laughing at the girls no one invites, because she has never been a girl no one invites. She’s hungry most of the time. In college she goes on so many dates, countless dates, and they are so much fun until they aren’t, until they are the kind of dates she only tells her friends about in the dark, in whispers. On her way to work, stomach gnawing, size 4 dress, she’ll always pick a subway seat next to another woman. Or stand with her back touching the wall. Protecting herself.
And she will not know how to be alone. How to feel full. How to revel in silence. She will never know what it’s like to be her other self, the one with the scar twisting her lip. The one who loves her mind. Her body. The one who has never, would never, howl at a sobbing girl.
Sage Tyrtle’s unsettling words haunt The Offing and New Delta Review–yet NPR/CBC/PBS let them on air. They teach storytelling to suspiciously talented humans (Clarion, Second City). Work + craft rants at tyrtle.com and Bluesky @sagetyrtle.