When I Was A Child I’d Only Known Depression Through Medicine Commercials, Where The Depressed Person

Unable to find love on land, and told she was unappetizing by her siren of the sea, the sailor girl sought out a lake to mope around in. In the water she so loved and away from the aching salty tide at her ankles, she found respite. But another dwelled in the muck of the lake’s bottom, and rose to meet her. A fresh water siren. Friendly as spit, with water’s wake that tasted of sugar and blood, she invited the sailor girl in. Her hair was red and curled, like a devil’s smile. White freckles sat on her face frankly, like table salt.

She reached out to the girl, and began to braid her long blonde hair, dragging her deeper into the water as she did, with a smile full of teeth.

I feel pressure to act not as a person, but as woman. To fill every void left by our absence, too little leaders of us, too little comedians of us, too little scientists of us; am I meant to choose what loss to make up for with just my one life?

There was a worse fate than death, I found, as the god I once worshipped laid his hands on my very soul.

To be unmade.

I was 12 the first time I was catcalled. A middle school boy I’d never met found his eyes lingering on the hem of my school uniform’s skirt. I wish I’d worn the long navy blue pants instead. I wish I’d worn a cock and balls as well to keep more boy’s eyes far away from me. But there was no way for me to avoid the screaming missile of womanhood. All I could do was listen to my girlhood ripping itself out of my fingers; my fingers that used to hold dolls now holding my tongue. A brutal silence I wore as woolen armor to protect me, and enrage me all the same with its intrepid itch. I shouldn’t have had to be quiet in the face of boys lusting after me, so eager to pursue manhood that they mutilate my girlhood. It shouldn’t have been taken from me by someone who used to see me as a cooties carrier, or on good days, a friend. I can barely remember all that they said now, but I cannot shake the feeling their nasty words gave me. I shouldn’t have had to understand what it meant to be a woman before I bled. But the world is not kind to its creators. Every foul mouthed boy crawled his way out of a woman, only to seek another to whittle down into a Venus doll. The boy ogled me alongside my two friends. He too, was not alone. He asked his friend toddling alongside him with an audacious voice which of us they preferred. “I like the tall one,” he said as if choosing flowers to pick from the ground. An act of collection, of killing the thing you covet. My friend piped up and said, “we’re not objects on a shelf,” but I still felt their eyes burning into our backsides. The boy and his friends spat words at us under their breath that I cannot remember, and we walked into the middle school gates feeling heavier than before. Unwillingly we were no longer school girls, but vessels of sexuality tempting men and exciting boys. I felt my crotch turn from a place I peed from to an open wound. I felt my skin tighten, I was trapped in a budding teen girl’s body when I yearned to keep my childhood just a little bit longer. I was 12 the day before. But in a matter of sentences I was dragged into womanhood, and I lamented having known girlhood at all.

-diary of a former girl

We could have heaven on earth, if there were no other people here but you and I. We would be shepards of animals, bearers of seeds. We would take the river home, and let it sweep us with its long cold body to our doorstep.

In another world, I am strong. And withstanding, and sure of myself. I pray she’s well, for I certainly am not.

In defense of the comic, whose characters are foolish but whose mind is not. I see her brilliance in the whites of the audience’s smiles, in the wit and the quickness of her responses. I know many serious men with the mask of intelligence hiding a simple and plain nature. I find the opposite quite riveting.

-Confessions of a Ticket Sales Clerk

She tastes of blood and salt, the siren I kiss on the rocks. I do not know whose blood I taste, but I do not care.

-Diary of a Siren

How to Kill a Crooked Ward

Though nothing can haunt a crooked ward, her neck often cracks and turns rapidly as if she fears something coming. As if eyes leech onto her rigid and bark-like back, and their hunger for her image alarms her, or the echoes left of her fallen mind. Nothing can hurt a corrupted spirit, but perhaps the past. She fears not a hunter, but a walking memory, pulling her back to her former self. How wicked a deed to dredge a dead woman's mind back to her rotting body, to convince her only to die.

You wouldn’t understand it, you aren’t a mimic. I miss crawling into other people’s skin because I feel more comfortable there. Sir John of Kistchire’s outrageous ski slope nose and eyebrows so furry birds mistake them for caterpillars, or Miss Browden’s pursed cherry red lips clinging for dear life at the end of her chin; they feel like second homes to me.

Why can’t you just be yourself?

I told you, you wouldn’t understand. I can be outrageous as Sir John when I’m him, I can be as persnickety and secretive as Miss Browden when I’m her. When I’m just, me, I’m. I’m nothing.

Most people don’t need a wardrobe of skins to feel at ease you know. Of course I wouldn’t understand you. You’re ununderstandable.

I’ll show you ununderstandable. I’ll take these eyes and strain them brown, I’ll take this hair and stretch it into a long flaxen rope just like yours. Though I don’t know how to braid, so we may look different still.

Do not wear my face. Ever.

Afraid of what you’ll see if I do?