Leila Torres

If I’d Been Seen

As a boy, I used to squeeze myself inside the lockers at my elementary school in between the class bell. I would sneak out during lunch to wedge myself under the shelf for my books. Peer through the tiny holes in the metal door and watch people frantically running back and forth to get to class. Listen to the hushed gossip being whispered through the halls once teachers or students thought the coast was clear. Conversations I never would’ve been allowed to be a part of. Peoples lives that I never would’ve been included in. If I stood there long enough, a tingling feeling in my legs would travel up towards my inner thighs as I tensed the feeling in my bladder in an eort to stay in my safe space longer. This habit continued into middle school, then followed me to high school. As I got older the lockers stayed the same. As my peers got taller, stronger, my growth was stunted by my persistent need to wiggle into my personal metal safe haven. Like a goldsh that never got moved into a bigger tank. I think, mainly, that I enjoyed the sense of solitude it gave me. Standing in a space where it’s okay to be stunted gave me the power I lacked outside of its four dirty walls. This is all I can think about as I’m looking through the cracks of my closet door while the definitely not physically stunted man is ripping open all of my dresser drawers.

I have to admit, I didn’t run in here to get away from the abnormally tall man ransacking my bedroom. I never broke the habit, you see. Wanting to feel seen when you’re small in an obnoxiously large world that somehow just keeps getting bigger. So every night, before the street lights come on, I open my tiny wooden closet door, get in, shut it behind me and stand there in silence. I like to close my eyes and feel the fabric of my coats pushing up against my shoulders. I leave my window open, and if I’m lucky I can hear my neighbors gossiping about their husbands. Or how Betty’s co-worker decided to sleep with their boss. How else would she have gotten the position? And isn’t she just a weasley little young thing with no prior experience. Isn’t she just, oh so small?

But tonight I didn’t get to listen to Betty, or the children running back home before the lights turn on. Tonight, I listened to the sound of my window being opened from the outside in. Tonight I watched as a man with a ripped wife beater, and thin skin peeling down the backs of his shoulders, climbed his way into my bedroom. I got to see the deep purple hues spread out under his eyes in the dark of my room as he scanned my belongings and listened for footsteps long enough for me to scan his body and see the blade he’s holding in his left hand. To hear the long freeing breaths he took while I stied mine. Tonight- after he tore up my entire bedroom, stabbed my bedsheets, broke my old wooden dresser- I got to watch him turn around and face my closet while he stared into my eyes through the wooden cracks.

I think; I wish, I wish, I wish, I wish I had found a different way to feel seen.

Controlled Cravings

Gamie used to tell me that you could know someone by the contents of their pockets. I know men who keep their whole world in the right side pocket of their jeans.

When I was a younger man than I am now, about the height of the average man’s hips, the popular children used to gather together in the corner of the park to solidify their everlasting friendship. To declare to the world, but mostly the other lesser children in the park, that you had true friends. The scar, that would never smoothly heal, served as a timeless reminder. Gamie, was his name. God, I remember Gamie. He would come to you to make the oering. Ask to meet in the carefully chosen corner of the park with his fathers switchblade. It was pastel blue. Not the colors you’d imagine a switchblade to be, but Gamie swore it was a real knife. You’d see it sticking out of his right side pocket on his way out to lunch. For all the teachers knew it could’ve been a toy. Maybe for all Gamie knew that’s exactly what it was. Simply a toy for his collecting game. I just had to know for myself. So that day in January, when he nally asked, I decided it was then that I would go and oer my hand. To let the crimson mix with that of the other little boys and girls. Some had slices from past years, others had none. They loved it. Feeling the excitement of collecting multiple keloids in one single school year. It was there, when the frost of pressurized water from the sky touched the slice in my hand that I realized- I liked it.