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Suitcase is heavier than it should be
with father’s hand hovering near my shoulder.
Won’t land. Never does. Feel the familiar
sting of relief that comes with abandonment.
Other girls are staring, always staring, or if not
then flinching, quickly if polite, the giggle
hastily smothered into a friend’s sleeve.
Girl in pink flawlessly does all three.
She’s the ugliest girl I’ve ever seen,
and I’ve seen plenty, I assure you that,
and I can understand that beauty like mine
is hard to come by, but really, the ease
with which she is so very, well, green
is hardly bearable, is it? Who’d care
to even know her name.
Her name is Galinda. With a Ga. Fuck me.
Certainly makes it easier to dislike her
spun-sugar voice, her collection of
admirers, how she looks — at me.
I guess she’ll do for an enemy,
I mean, it’s not like we’ll be roommates
for eternity. Suppose I’d better
learn her name if I’m to know
who will be to blame: Elphaba.
Clearly a name that won’t be
getting someone very far.
Lay awake that night to stare
at ceiling, at future stretching
out like a ribbon of green
light, terrifying and mine.
Play with a hat decidedly not mine.
The dance is a giddy, mindless whirl,
exactly the way life should be,
Fiyero sweeping me across the floor
with that loose-limbed grace of his,
laughing because everything is so
terribly charming. Really. It feels like
freedom, finally, this lightness a
delicious absence of consequence:
being a girl who could be anything,
anyone, so long as she never stops
moving—
I open the door. Walk in.
She’s wearing the hat. My hat.
The ridiculous, pointy black cone
of a hat I gave her as a joke, a barb
now wrapped like a bow, now worn
like a crown she’s — god — refusing to put
down. Room titters. Music falters, falls
Flat. Elphaba begins to—
Can’t dance. Legs are strange
and angular, more angular than
legs should be, can’t move except
in jerks and reaches and earnest
unpracticed movements, can barely
breathe into the laughter around me—
I’m not stupid. She is dancing alone,
which is a far more stupid thing to do,
more stupid than wearing my stupid hat
and coming to this stupid dance and
taking me to her stupid, stupid lessons.
As if I’d want to go, as if I wouldn’t be going
anyway, in time, when invited, as if
the crowd wouldn’t part for me the way
they are now, as if I wouldn’t know
how to dance, taking her hands into
steps she doesn’t know, as if I would
let some stupid girl dance alone.
Have a friend now, I suppose,
although don’t suppose it’s something
I chose, suppose she chose it, really.
Still tells me to say Galinda with
The fucking Ga. And that hair toss. God.
She will be popular before long,
methinks, and what methinks
me makes happen. Although
looking at her, methinks
meneeds a drink. Or Fiyero
to give me one, preferably
on a rooftop, preferably in a
swirling dance that’ll never—
Stop. Shouldn’t be out here
with him. Not him. Am not
that girl, not blonde, sorely lacking
capability of hair-tossing way
into popularity. Not the person
he spun only nights ago at a ball,
spun over and over again,
like life would never end.
She’s leaving, wearing that
impossible hat. She’s impossible,
I’ll give her that. The Wizard will see
her, she says, and everything
will change. Everything. I nod
and smile and say all the right
things because that is what I do,
even when my tongue feels glued,
because that is what I do, I think.
I don’t think, just reach for
the only friend I knew,
the only one I wanted
to be coming too, together.
We’re unlimited. But that
can’t be true, knowing
it would be years before I knew.
Wizard is a fraud, Morrible a monster.
Can blame them, can’t blame her,
not when she will be happy,
when at least there is a possibility
of happiness in her yellow-bricked
path of dreams-come-true. Maybe
blame her a little. But it’s residue.
I hate it, being everything they need
me to be. They knew I couldn’t, wouldn’t
defy their gravity. I hate Elphaba too,
hate her wish for happiness, for me,
before spilling into the dark unseen,
hate the way Fiyero won’t even look
at me, I mean, I don’t even know
where he is, or where he's been
at a time like this.
She is everything they need her
to be. Wonder if she’s still in there,
somewhere, the girl who danced
with me. Wonder if she wonders.
Stopped wondering when he found me,
or I him, details are a blur of desperation.
See, it was a desperate situation.
Oh he found her, did he? Well then.
Well. I suppose now I know where he is,
or at the very least, will be. As I also
know for one — what’s her name? —
Nessa Rose.
I’m limited. I’ve never felt it
as clearly as when I cannot save
all those dear to me. Can’t even
save them from losing shoes,
those sparkly fucking shoes,
for which there’ll be hell to pay
regardless of their pathetic
little hurricane excuse.
I’m not that girl, cannot be
that girl. I’m no wicked witch
of the west. No cape-donning
force of nature putting an
artificial hurricane to shame.
I am not that girl.
I do not know this pain.
Cannot let him know that pain,
not him, oh god, not him,
please. Have done terrible
things, will do many more.
Let fury scorch the earth,
lose myself in Grimmerie’s
white pages, twist into
the monster they drew,
which they always thought
they knew. Prove them right—
—now, right now, they are coming,
and they are coming for her,
and she needs to go, now,
needs to know she is better than
this, better than they know.
No. She is not standing in front
of me right now. No. Why
would she even come back
when she’s so good, has it so
good, been everything they
wanted and more? Thought
when I left I had shut that door.
I thought I was good.
I really thought I was good.
I have been so weak
I did not see that my one
friend was stood by the door
as if waiting for me.
Have a plan. Will let girl go
with those god-forsaken shoes.
Have little to lose, save one
goodbye to one friend
I won’t need to save again.
I don’t know anything
anymore, don’t know what’s going
on behind the door, why she told me
to stay, or to go, don’t know, can’t see
why there are screams and disappearing
puffs of smoke that are far too green.
Because I knew her, I wanted her
to know how good she was
of a friend, to me
I mean, all the times she can’t see,
she can’t possibly know
She changed me, and I know
it was not for the better—
it was for good.