the last one picked up

every friday the other kids pressed their faces to the windows. cars in the parking lot. mothers with bags. fathers who smelled like outside.

i learned to be somewhere else when that happened. the bathroom, usually. or the football pitch if the weather held. you get good at not being in the room when the room is going to ask you something you can’t answer.

on the last day i was one of the last ones waiting. me and one other kid. and then mor pulled up. she took me to buy new clothes because the old ones didn’t fit anymore. ten kilos gone. i remember trying things on in a store and them actually fitting, and her face, and the strangeness of being treated like something worth celebrating.

i didn’t trust it. i wanted to. i think i did, for maybe an hour.

i’m writing because i think you still do that thing — leave the room before it can ask you anything. you’re better at it now. whole apartments, whole relationships, whole years. but it’s the same move. i learned it at twelve in skælskør, watching cars that weren’t ours pull into the lot.

the pizza afterwards was good, by the way. i remember that.

/ den der ventede