Page 16 of Creeping Lily
Her eyes soften. Her thumb lingers.
For the first time in months, I feel the faintest spark of something I thought I’d lost forever.
“Welcome back,” she says.
I pull my hand away before the weight of her eyes can crush me. She lets me go without protest, but her gaze doesn’t move. She’s not going to let me fade back into the bed. Not today.
The tea between us has gone lukewarm. I lift the cup just for something to do with my hands, the scent of cinnamon winding up into my head. It smells like safety. Like winter mornings years ago, before the world got sharp. I take a sip and my throat tightens. My body wants to reject it. Not because it tastes bad, but because it tastes like a time I can’t have back.
She starts talking about therapy again.
Her voice is steady, but I can hear the iron underneath it. This isn’t a suggestion; it’s an order.
I nod, because I can’t argue with her when her eyes look like that—flinty, stubborn, maybe the only thing holding me tethered to the earth.
But in my head, I’m screaming.
Therapy means talking. Talking means peeling myself open for someone to poke around in. It means giving language to things I’ve spent months locking in the dark.
I’m not ready.
You’ll never be ready,something inside me whispers.That’s why you have to go.
I pullmy sleeves down over my wrists even though it’s warm. The building that houses the therapist’s office doesn’t look like a place where healing happens. It’s brick, faded red, with a metal door that sticks before opening.
The waiting room smells faintly of peppermint. There’s apotted plant in the corner that’s given up on life, a few stubborn leaves clinging to its stem. I sit in a chair near the wall while Grandma Jo fills out paperwork.
My therapist’s name is Rachel. She’s younger than I expect—mid-thirties, maybe. She doesn’t have that clinical chill I thought therapists were supposed to have. She’s warm in a way that feels deliberate, like she knows her job is to make me believe she’s a safe place.
She asks if I want water. If I’m comfortable. If the chair is okay.
I tell her it’s fine, because I don’t know how else to answer.
Then she asks me why I’m here.
The words jam in my throat.
Why I’m here? I’m here because I stopped wanting to be. I’m here because I tried to undo myself and failed. I’m here because my grandmother is afraid the next time she comes into my room, I won’t be breathing.
But I can’t say any of that.
“I don’t want to talk about what happened,” I finally tell her. My voice is steady, but my hands are shaking in my lap.
“That’s okay,” she says easily. “You don’t have to.”
I pause. Swallow. The breakfast I nibbled at earlier sits bitter in my stomach. “I just… I want to talk about what it made me.”
She leans forward just slightly. “And what’s that?”
The answer takes its time. It feels like I’m dragging it up from somewhere cold and deep.
“Empty.”
She doesn’t rush to fill the silence. She lets the word sit there between us like a living thing. And in that space, I realize it’s the first time I’ve said it out loud—to anyone.
Empty.
Rachel tells me we can start there. Not with the attack. Not with the people I lost. Just with this… hollow shape I’ve become. She says we can figure out if there’s anything worth putting back in it.
