Blank Space by Ksenia Medrina

It seemed as if she was trying to burn
that piece of paper with her stare. Her feet seemed to be glued to the floor. She hasn’t left the table for hours, never changing her pose or even moving a finger. She was seventeen, but her face bore an expression of a hundred-year-old wanderer who had seen too many unkind and terrifying things in this world, with the only difference that all of them had been inside of her own head. She was seventeen, but frustration and misery of a too old for this world human was sewn into her heart.
She knew everything about the world and herself.
She deciphered all signals of distress that her mind sent her about the surroundings and tried to become as small as her body and beliefs allowed her.
When people spoke about race and justice, she lowered her head and sealed her mouth, not allowing a single word to slip from it. She knew how loud and painful people's voices could be, saying she was too young to say what was right and wrong, what was justice and privilege. She knew how apologetic her mother’s voice sounded, when she explained that her girl was indeed too young and didn’t think before speaking and how dissatisfied it was when she admonished her.
When a minute scene in a movie showed a couple of same-gender people or even mentioned someone being in such relationships, she prayed to no one so that her parents didn’t notice anything or didn’t have enough fire in them to curse the hell out of what had been shown.
When her classmates met her and excitedly chirruped about some naive coming-of-age, drama series they had seen, some extra popular selfie-worth places they had been to, that boy with snow-white smile and cool biceps who had beaten the life out of an innocent boy for his glasses, she forced herself to smile politely and listen, not showing any signs of discomfort. She knew how hard it was to wipe off her desk in middle school from those childish, but cutting insults that called her freaky and ugly and stupid for not liking what everyone else seemed to like.
When her auntie said as a matter of fact how she would work as an apprentice at her company and how grateful she should be to this auntie and her own parents for this opportunity, she only said thank you and nothing more. She buried a dream to become a teacher in kindergarten deep in her heart, a dream to work with kids and teach them good, even though this job lacked prestige and a couple of zero’s in a payment check to her parents.
She knew everything and nothing at all. Why she was born with such curious eyes that allowed her to look wider and see more, why her ideals were so simple and differed so much from what her parents tried to plant in her mind? Why she couldn’t elicit a single smile from her mother any more? Why her father didn’t say to her words other than “hi” and “get ready” and “you’re a disappointment”?
The piece of paper was no longer burning. It was drowning in salt, the ink of questions smeared. “What is your goal in life?” “What are you interested in?” “Who do you want to become in the future?” Under each question - a blank space, never filled with truth. Only with guilt.