Sometimes I Didn't Talk at All by HLR
Most times I’d tell you interesting facts about ketchup / painters / space or Japan / coins / pregnant giraffes but sometimes I didn’t talk at all sometimes for a long time but still you’d wait and wait still with the patience of a saint until I came back until I came back to tell you that there’s a treasure chest containing $1million buried somewhere in the Rocky Mountains and then I’d get excited because I’d decided that we absolutely had to find it but then I’d cry because you’d remind me that America would never let us in and then the silence would begin but still you’d wait and wait still with the patience of a saint until I came back to you.
HLR (she/her) writes poetry and short prose about living with chronic mental illness, trauma, and grief. Her work has been widely published, most recently by Misery Tourism. She is the author of History of Present Complaint (Close to the Bone, 2021). She lives in north London. Twitter: @HLRwriter / IG: hel.rol