A fat white seed sleeps in the sky.
They only want to hear that you’re healing, you’re in recovery, taking it one day at a time. If you’re locked into sick, you should stop wasting their time and just get dead.
Some stand-up comic cracks, ‘No, Melinda no es linda.’ They call me Me-no-linda for the rest of the period. This is how terrorists get started, this harmless fun.
Mom closes her eyes. Her skin is a flat gray color, like underwear that has been washed so many times it’s about to fall apart. I feel bad that I didn’t fold more shirts for her.
Everybody carried a little evil in them, Momma once told me. Madam Lockton had more than her share. The poison had eaten holes through her soul and made room for vermin to nest inside her.
Keep breathing. It took a few minutes but I won. The grey pulled away from my eyes in ribbons and whispered that it would be back soon.
I don’t know what I’m doing in the next five minutes and she has the next ten years figured out.
On the morning of my Born Day, I thought my problems were over. That I’d grown from Changeling to Amazon. That I was ready to be a warrior. Instead, I lost everything. Everyone. I lost myself, too.
We need more holidays to keep the social studies teachers on track.
The salt in my tears feels good when it stings my lips. I wash my face in the sink until there is nothing left of it, no eyes, no mouth. A slick nothing.
My goal is to go home and take a nap.
But they are so cute. And they cheer on our boys, inciting them to violence and, we hope, victory. These are our role models – the Girls Who Have It All. I bet none of them ever stutter or screw up or feel like their brains are dissolving into marshmallow fluff. They all have beautiful lips, carefully out- lined in red and polished to a shine.
I want to kill him.
There is a beast in my gut, I can hear it scraping away at the inside of my ribs.
I’m feeling pretty damn good for a change.
I stand on the edge of a cliff, wondering if I’m going to fall or jump.
Heather is not at school today. Everybody is griping about her lame decorations. I bet she calls in sick the rest of the year. Heather should run away and join the Marines immediately.
I am trapped with Andy Evans.
She’s packing at least five grand worth of orthodontia, but has great shoes.
You never think about the mall being closed. It’s always supposed to be there, like milk in the refrigerator or God.