the idea

Dust was sifting through the afternoon sunlight, and I was sitting alone in my room when the idea came to me. I think I knew then that I must've been too young to have come up with an idea like that. But my mum had told me I was smart, so it came as no surprise to me. Of course, she's also called the opposite of smart countless times, but I liked to remember the names I liked.
I went to tell mum right away She looked tired in her chair, but it didn't matter, cause I had come up with the perfect form of punishment. This peculiar kind of punishment would be to get to know other people. Mum looked at me funny at this, but I was delighted with myself and hurried to explain to her my idea.
Didn't she see? When you really get to know someone, you see all their ugly, mean parts that other people don't get to see. Sometimes you understand; sometimes you don't. But either way your stubborn heart finds stuff in them to like, love even. You learn to love them even when the dark takes over the light. But that's the good part. Cause every time you learn to love them-
They go away.
This would be the perfect punishment for anyone. I stood up straight and tall and watched my mums eyes do a funny, jittery, watery thing as she sat forward and still in her rocking chair. She suddenly pulled me close to her, onto her lap, and she was crying into my hair, whispering breathily almost as if to herself, "I'm never going to leave you, darling. I'm going to stay with you forever. Forever, do you hear me?"
But I just hid my smile in her tangled, matted hair, knowing our secret, that this must just be part of the game. And I was right, just as I always was. She held me for awhile, and then the moment passed, and, as she put me back down again, her eyes were distant, her face a blank slate. I went to my room and lay awake hungry, thinking about my idea in the dark.
And the next morning she was gone.

It would take a long time for me to figure out why mum wasn't excited about my idea and that the game wasn't really a game at all and even longer to understand that, sometimes, people stay.