Hannah Kamphuis “What’s My Meaning?” (poem

Spring 2022

that I had picked out and had been excited to watch – but no one could help listening to her cries.

She had cut herself. I don’t know how. We had no access to glass or knives or anything like that. So, I don’t know how she did it, but she did, and it sent her back to the second house into the empty bed in my room.

Finally, she emerged from behind the couch, exhausted and dehydrated. I could have sworn she’d broken some sort of a record – I don’t think anyone has ever cried for that long.

The girl next to me was whispering in my ear, “Invite her over. You’re the only one she knows.”

“I’m not going to do that,” I mumbled, trying to keep my focus on the movie.

“Jodie, come sit with us on the couch,” the girl said to her, knowing there was no point in urging me any further.

She won’t, I thought irritably. If I’m sitting anywhere on the couch, she won’t go near it.

The couch was almost empty. Most of the girls were on the floor playing games with each other. Despite this, Jodie sat down on the open cushion directly to my left. I tried hard not to blink. Listening to her sob behind the couch had been painful and consuming. I despised the way it made my heart sink and bleed into my chest. Still, without looking at her, I closed the notebook in my lap, rose from my seat, and sat on the floor across the room. I would finish the movie but I would not sit near her.

I ignored the tears that began rolling silently down her cheeks and, that night, I slept out in the hall next to the nurse’s station so that I wouldn’t have to be near her before a car came to pick me up for my flight back to the Black Hills.

For years following, I truly thought that any woman who could possibly love me would hate herself if she did. That was what Jodie had shown me when she could have simply left me alone. Because I was a woman and she was a woman and she hated herself for what she was and she hated me for how she felt about me. I regretted leaving her alone on that couch for a while after, often wondering how I could have been so cruel.

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