Pretty face, pretty body.
Ugly heart.
Parasitic blood.
The back of my classroom chair felt colder today, felt like a strong icy bite against my uncomfortable goose flesh covered skin. Metal bolts stung my bare back like biting bullet holes and the wooden dark desk my arms rested on felt like a river at night when you dip your feet in. Freezing, dark and lonely against my naked skin. My body didn’t feel like my own, the classroom didn’t feel like class and the world surrounding me felt upside down. My stomach ached with growing hunger and my eyes fought the swinging sleepiness of my eyelids while I watched the warping world. Everything before me was a hole of emptiness, the people beside me were faceless figures. Bodies of warmth and a beating heart, unworldly human beings beside me. The metal bolts dug deeper into my back reaching for my heart to end its aches. I felt their icy metal tear through my bones. Or maybe it was the words I heard earlier today still slicing their way through me. The eyes of those unworldly beings started to dig deeper into my soul, confused and studying the deceiving creature that sat before them. I felt the desk beneath my resting arms ward their stares, shield their judgment, and seal me off from the world, sinking my body into blackness. The world was nothing. I was nothing.
Alone and in silence I now sat before that river in the dark. My eager toes rested on the shore’s enveloping edge and waited to be greeted by the black waters ebbing fingertips. I waited to be dragged under today and to come up for a breath tomorrow. To be washed of those words while they gut me from the inside out. To be staring at darkness instead of that blue text message that will brand my actions forever. That voice that came from the other end of it as I read each syllable. I sat before the shore’s enveloping edge wanting to wash my skin, my ears, my eyes, and my mind from today.
When I stood up my feet dragged, picking up the river tumbled pebbles between my toes, and padded toward the dark, freezing, and lonely stream. It’s onyx fingers made for a manacle around my ankles. I let its onyx ink grip my knees as I strode deeper into its welcoming and drowning blackness. Watching it shackle my waist and then my neck until the shore and those pebbles were nothing but a memory. Until today was nothing but a dream. And those words were nothing more than a mere finger prick. The shackles closed my airway, they caused choking sobs, and then the freezing water didn’t sting anymore.
When I opened my eyes, they were met with blinding whiteness, my eyelashes swinging their swords again, fighting for sleep . My weary gaze dragged to the left of me, to the girl who sat only three feet away. She had brown, golden hair that was glimmering from the creeping sunlight through the stately classroom windows. Her nose slightly upturned and her eyes lined with elegant black pencil. Beautiful. She asked me what I was writing. “Just a story,” I whispered.
She smiled. “Beautiful. Beautiful and talented.”
That’s what she said.
She could never see the darkness that just stared back at me. Could never see the parasite within my bloodstream or the ugliness of my heart.
“Thank you,” I replied.