I call everyone lovely and darling and Becca darling laughs uncomfortably. Hey baby let me read your palm for you, oh it’s just as I thought, that’s too bad, it seems you’re going to drop out of school and never get married, but baby girl I’m just full of shit, let’s get married okay? You want to? Let’s go, okay? I have an empty red cup in my hand and I’m wearing a dress that’s tight and black and tight and I smile and say darling, lovely darling, go fuck yourself. I am wearing a dress that’s tight and black and tight. I wonder why I am here.
I don’t have hands, I don’t think, I have pockets and elbows jutting out at confused angles, pointing at shadows that my dragging feet are stabbing and scaring away. There’s buckets of cement with peeling signs stuck in them, and Parking For Tenants Only sticks in my torched throat. When I was 11, I climbed over a fence that said Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted everyday when I walked home. I don’t have a throat, I don’t think, I have tubes and tubes of acid-corroded sentiments and rusted chainlink fences. Memories, some people call them. I mixed up the words “prosecuted” and “executed” in my 11-year-old mind. I imagined my 11-year-old self escaping Death’s metal wire claws after school.
Disconnected, like syllable breaks, so car-ry my un-feel-ing card-board bo-dy home, an-y-bo-dy?
I couldn’t see myself anymore, so I cut my hair. Now I see the outline of a sharp cheekbone and eyes gone hollow from too many days spent waiting on doorsteps. I look tired and lonely, but that just means I need more chemicals. On my face, in my body, I really should fix these last vestiges of rationality I cling to. I cried, because I don’t want to see myself anymore and because nobody understands my sarcasm, especially not you, Becca darling. Hair will grow back, I think, it’s one of the only things that do.
