Lyrical Logic

Author’s Note: I wrote the first draft of this story a decade ago for a college class, mostly because I had an assignment due and honestly didn’t know what else to write. But sometimes, when you’re just trying to fill a blank page, the truth spills out disguised as fiction. It became an allegory about the heavy gravity of the things we do to survive, and the spaces we build in our minds when the physical world isn’t safe. Content warning: Allegorical depictions of childhood trauma.

A little girl, just 7 years old. She would go to bed and cry. She didn’t understand it. She didn’t know why it happened. But no matter what she did, her mother yelled. Her mother would yell because the little girl had been loud or because the little girl didn’t know how to do the laundry. Her mother would yell and tell her she was the worst daughter ever. But on the worst nights, her mother would tell her father how the little girl made her feel worthless. 

The nights her father would talk with her were almost worse than the nights where it was just her mother yelling. Because she had tried to explain what really happened, but it only made him madder. So, the little girl learned it was easier to stay quiet than it was to fight back. 

At night she would cry. Usually, she would cry until she fell asleep. But one night, the little girl saw the trail of tears that was flowing toward her closet. Curious, she crawled out of bed and followed the tears. Eventually, she found a place where the floor opened up. She climbed down the ladder, following the tears that led the way to the most breathtaking scene she had ever seen. 

The tears flowed into a waterfall that fell into a lake that was next to a meadow full of blue irises. The little girl, who had wanted nothing more than to feel any sort of safety and love, felt it there. She looked out over the waterfall, and she felt seen. She felt safe. She followed a trail down into the meadows, and she sat on the lake shore. The irises were leaning towards her, almost offering her a comfort she would never receive elsewhere. Eventually, she fell asleep in the meadow, waking just in time to get back to her room. 

So it began. Every night the girl would wait until her parents were asleep and then she would go sleep in the meadow. As she grew, and the tears became fewer, the irises grew. They grew and grew until they completely covered her sleeping body, almost as if they were trying to protect her. 

But finally, the little girl managed to get out of her parents house. She got somewhere safe, and she was finally free. But that didn’t stop the nightmares. It didn’t stop the feeling of being useless and unloveable. She still cried herself to sleep, but she could never find the trail of tears that led back to her safety. 

Eventually, she decided it wasn’t worth it. She’d rather be broken and have her irises than be happy and be alone. So, she went back. She went back to her parents house and she let the abuse continue. Because as long as she could find her irises at night, nothing else mattered. She found her peace, and she was doing whatever it took to keep it.