I’d really rather die than eat your food and listen to you call me love.
One word, two lips, three four five fingers form a fist. One corner, two parents, three four five reasons to hide. One child, two eyes, three four seventeen years of fear. A broken broomstick, a pair of wile faces, angry whispers, locks on my door.
Do you never get exhausted being so wholly unbearable? You have as much charisma as the rotting innards of unidentified roadkill.
That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.
My words wear no parachutes as they fall out of my mouth.
I have a heart, says science, but I am a monster, says society.
I’m wondering how many more mistakes I’ll have to make before things finally fall into place. If they ever will.
Sometimes I wish I never had to sleep. Sometimes I think that if I stay very, very still, if I never move at all, things will change. I think if I freeze myself I can freeze the pain. Sometimes I won’t move for hours. I will not move an inch. If time stands still nothing can go wrong.
Sometimes I wish I could step outside of myself for a while. I want to leave this worn body behind, but my chains are too many, my weights too heavy.
I touch the tip of my finger to his lips. “There are secrets in here,” I say. “I want them out.” He tries to bite my finger. I steal it back.
I think if I freeze myself I can freeze the pain.
All I know next are his arms, the desperate edge to his voice when he says my name, and I’m unraveling in his embrace, I’m frayed and falling apart and I’m making no effort to control the tremors in my bones and he’s so hot his skin is so hot and I don’t even know where I am anymore.
Warner was supposed to be dead. Warner was supposed to be dead because I was supposed to have shot him but no one supposed I’d need to know how to fire a gun so now I suppose he’s come to find me. He’s come to fight. For me.
He takes my hand. Intertwines our fingers. Offers me a smile that manages to kiss my heart.
He leaves less than a foot of space between us and I’m 10 inches away from spontaneous combustion.
I’m falling apart and into his heart and I’m a disaster.
Because the more I discover about him, the fewer excuses I have to push him away. He’s unraveling before me, becoming something entirely different; terrifying me in a way I never could’ve expected.
The world is a mess and I want to laugh because all I can think is how horrible and beautiful it is.
We can hide in a cupboard under the stairs our whole life and it’ll still find us. Death will show up wearing an invisible cloak and it will wave a magic wand and whisk us away when we least expect it.
Hate looks just like everybody else until it smiles. Until it spins around and lies with lips and teeth carved into the semblance of something too passive to punch.