"hey, you wanna come in?"

no.
i don't.

i want to stay right here where it's safe.
i want to stay in my house,
bitter,
enraged,
staring out the window and only seeing snow in the middle of summer

the rabid fangirl i was, now just rabid.

leave me alone.
nobody understands.
get out of here.
you're just going to cause more trouble.

i hiss at the door.
nobody ever asked me to stay before.

i am used to crumbs
handed down from late night delays
and hard subs on YouTube in 360p quality
and no personal messages on Twitter
(what the hell is this WeVerse thing anyway)
and broad, sweeping, mentsu-style corporate messages
telling us that there is no war here,
it's all in our heads

and you just expect me to walk through the back door like i'm family?

[ohana meant family.
it meant nobody got left behind.]

i am so sick and tired of carrying the cross
that some boy gave me long ago
(after all, it is always some boy)
dragging it through the underground halls past thousands of people
staring at the ceiling constantly wondering
what might have been
what might have been
what might have been
constantly missing what is now

so i try the now.
i am escorted to the now by five boys
(MY five boys, don't get it twisted)
by a bunny rabbit who is softer than the bedsheets i hide under
and i stand
and i stare at the sky
and i just can't get over the fact that it's summer.

how did i get here?
and then, the next question scares me more:
can i go other places, too?
is it safe to?
will they mind that i'm still sick,
that i don't trust anybody outside of my soft bubble
that everything, especially healing takes time?

perhaps that's how i got here.
perhaps it was just time.

so yes, if you ask me at the back door
"hey, you wanna come in?"
i am still too weary and too hurt
to take that one
last
step
into a world that i don't know.
but perhaps, for now, instead,
i will lean my cross upon the door
and i will sit at the threshold

and i will listen.