The courier font is clean. I appreciate its lines, its control. It looks crisp, like my button-downs fresh from the dry cleaners. The courier is lightly starched and pressed. Precisely how I like my life. My appearance. I like things courier fonted. Ordered. Straightened. Symmetrical. Tucked in.
That’s me.
Or at least, that’s who I used to be before my life turned upside down. I wouldn’t be able to courier font my way through hell. The devil doesn’t care about personal preferences when he appears in your life.
Words like trauma and sexual assault and even betrayal all look the same no matter if courier tries to hide it within the jot or tittle. There is nothing yet everything to hide inside an ordered world which is why I fought so hard to keep my existence in tidy rows.
Suffocating control, ripped away from me, terrified me at first. Precision, order, and control? No longer. And yet?
When a match was dropped onto my printed lines, I watched it burn. serifs melted from rigid lines, my own lines freely flowed into the next and I could finally breathe again.
I loved to watch that courier burn, leaving behind disorder and a chaotic existence for me to rise from, to reject any serifs that try to restrain my lines from reaching to the sky, from holding my voice back.
I love to watch my courier burn, its message delivered by yesterday’s ash. Fire fueled into flame by spiteful intentions might have tried to destroy the words carefully set from my existence, yet those who arranged the kindling never knew how much I loved to dance around a fire.
Published by ShadowTeamsNYC and represented by Lisa Hagen Books
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