What You Would Rather Hear

What would you rather hear? That six or seven 
or twelve times or more I actually had ideation, 
or that I walked away, instead, unharmed? That I 
downed a bottle of prescription poison, drowning 
my story in another tale of tragedy and loss, or that I
picked up a pen and wrote between thunderclaps, 
each word its own kind of torrent? That I suffered 
in the silence I had inherited, kept the tape that genes
and a hateful world had slapped on my young face,
nodded in frightened-eyed acquiescence at every lie
declared in absolutism? Or that I birthed my own truth,
had carried it for decades, feeding it tenderly through my 
own familiar lips, passing on whatever slices of fresh fruit 
and wisdom someone kind had left out for us? You see, 
the real problem is, no one ever asks what’s going well

in your life. What good things have happened. If somehow, 
in the shadow of early morning, you happened upon a random 
earring someone dropped in your bag. Whether it was pink 
or purple or a splendid shade of teal, or perhaps some other
vibrant color with a name you had yet to learn. No one ever 
asks what happened at the end, skipping to the part where
everything turned out all right, how some stranger helped you 
find a comfortable bed and gave you free water after days 
of you being too far away from home. They don’t want to hear how 
you landed with the love of your life, the way you run your fingers 
gently down the back of what otherwise would have been another 
sleepless night, lulling you both into dreams that made you wake 
in laughter. How you earned your freedom to use every morning 
to create something more beautiful than any anxiety could ever
come up with, a kind of hope that overgrows charred and barren land, 
how you could now offer something besides another sad narrative, 
one more account strengthening an innate bias of negativity 
that no longer serves anyone well. And I think if people started 

conversations with, “Tell me about something good that happened
today,” instead of, “How was your day, dear?” in that kind-hearted
attempt at understanding (but still with that tone of, “Go ahead
and unload the bad stuff”) we might all be a bit better off—
not that we’re ignoring those awful things gone wrong, how every bite
or sting of some other person’s stupidity really got to you, or sitting
in traffic and bad memories when you really have to pee isn’t a part 
of everyday living, or war or famine or fire or worse is killing everyone
off, but that somewhere, hiding amid suffering, there were the human 
helpers ready to lend a hand. So please, for the love of all you think 
that’s holy, for once, tell me a funny story, how someone inspired you 
to keep going when you really thought this time would be the final chapter. 
Tell me about the light you saw edging daffodils in gold, how you snapped 
that picture to make it last, to return to it in your hours of need. Tell me 
what made you decide to stick around, and I promise. I’ll tell you why I did.

Katherine Mercurio Gotthardt, copyright March 23, 2024, all rights reserved