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SARAH LANSING

Seattle, WA

May 5

Words.

Words have consumed me, of late. They’re just about all I have left, now, the only solace that remains. I sit here at my father’s desk, in the house I grew up in, telling my story to a computer screen. I write, now, for no eyes but my own. Every night I obliterate what I’ve written, in fear of having my work confiscated by the police. Days, my fingers hover over the keyboard, ever ready to hit the delete key in the event that what passes for the law should show up at my door.

Meanwhile I gather my thoughts, putting them into words.

Gather…Gathering…Gathered.

I have always loved that word. It has a multitude of meanings, as in storm clouds gathering, or supplicants gathered for prayer. It can mean a woman gathering material at the waist, as my mother did, to make a skirt. One can gather one’s thoughts, gather a man into oneself, gather children at one’s knee.

Or—as was the case at Thornberry—it can mean a gathering of lies.

We were all lying about something that spring. And thus, having come together, having gathered for reasons none of us fully understood, we harmed ourselves, and each other, in ways we had no notion of before we began.

I will tell you this: Each of us did what we had to do. Of that, I am clear, to this day. A path opened up and we took it, not even thinking where it might lead.

It led us straight into hell.