crash&burn.

I take long, deep drags on my cigarette that leave my lungs parched for air. And I throw up. Puking after smoking is like fire, like breathing fire.

Sometimes desire stirs in my body, spiders spinning webs in the pit of my stomach. I know it's normal but I want only to tear it out of me.
I imagine what it'd be like to starve the flesh away, be this breastless, straight thing. A being free of need, of any type of desire. Maybe no one would hurt me then.


The first was a neighborBoy, and my Mom likes him. I am nine. No one is home and he pins me to the kitchen floor. He is fourteen. I do not remember what happens next but later when Mom is coming home he hears and gets up. He tells me not to say anything. I don't.
The second time is another boy and I am still nine. He's faceless, I know who he is but I will not tell, I will never tell. I am laughing when he touches me, thinking he is tickling me and trusting because I am young and haven't learned what it is like to not-trust. But when he puts his hands in my pants, my pink little girl underwear, it takes me only a little while to realize and I scratch his arms with my nails and run away.
The third time I may remember and I may not. Maybe it is a dream but I am waking up in a bed, a big adult bed, and I feel sick all over my body, all inside my body. And I am thinking 'ohgod' because I'm eleven and this is the third year I've had my period. I know the man, he is a man and not a boy like the other two. Soon he will want me to come have breakfast but I feel sick and dry. This man touched my sister and made her fall apart when we were little.
I remember her tantrums after, kicking walls and screeching. The way she'd scream and scream when he walked in while she and I took a bath together.
I think I dreamed it all. It does not feel real.

I don't feel angry with any of them. I do feel anger at my body for growing soft and full early. For not being a thin little girl body. For having been an invitation.
I feel anger that I said 'yes' when he asked if I liked boys when even then I knew damn well I didn't. Maybe if I hadn't lied that could've changed things.


Maybe it was my fault.