outtakesfrommars

[outtakesfrommars]

Self-destructive Haircuts

Okay, so maybe I’m not over my self destructive habits.

I mean, there are worse things I could be doing. I could be calling the ex I don’t have. I could be drinking alcohol that I’m too young to buy. I could be…

Okay, maybe there aren’t any worse things for me. This is it. Rowan Thomas at rock bottom— standing in the bathroom with a pair of scissors in my hands, staring into my own eyes in the mirror as if I might find an answer there. The longer I look at my face, the less convinced I am that I’m real. I look plastic, like a mannequin. Like if I tried to speak, my lips might not move.

I slowly open and close my mouth, just to make sure I can. I look like a fish.

I’m losing my mind.

I raise the scissors to my head, slide them under a chunk of hair and snip.

My heart races, filling me with adrenaline like it’s trying to suggest I put the scissors down and go for a run instead. It’s too late for good decisions, and I’ve already made it quite clear that I don’t run. I’m not about to become Coach Lanigan’s prodigy now. I lift another chunk of hair away from my face and cut it off. Then another. And another. I keep hacking away until the rough shape of bangs begins to form across my forehead.

I look like absolute shit.

Like…it looks really, really bad.

I stare at the hideous mannequin in the mirror and watch as her eyes brim with tears. I did this to myself. Five minutes ago I looked perfectly fine, yet I chose to do this, and now I have the audacity to cry over it. If anybody knew what was happening in this bathroom, if anyone saw the clumps of hair lining the sink and me, red-face and teary as I watch my own pathetic blubbering—they’d have me sectioned immediately.

But nobody sees this. This little meltdown is for me alone, and I don’t have to face the consequences until I’ve composed myself, cleaned up the sink and walked downstairs.

My mother barely reacts when she sees me. She pauses for a moment, makes a little sound as though I’ve just painted my nails or tried on a new shirt, then turns back to her magazine.

I keep walking because I don’t quite have the guts to face her yet, despite how blatantly uninterested she seems to be. I know that a worse reaction is coming. I know she’s going to want to have a conversation about this. I head to the kitchen and find a bag of sweet and salty popcorn in the cupboard—all the artificial flavouring, sodium, and corn syrup I need to deal with the trials and tribulations of my mid-teens—then I head back to the living room.

This time, my mother sets down her magazine on the coffee table, looking at me expectantly.

She doesn’t say a word.

“Hi,” I say.

“Hello.”

That’s it. No questions. No scolding. No, “hey, you look a little fucked up. Everything alright?’

Nothing.

This is the problem. My mom wants to know everything about my life when it’s good, every humiliating little detail on the positive end of the spectrum, but the second anything goes wrong there’s not a word from her. I mean, it’s not like she knows something is wrong, because I haven’t actually told her. But she should be able to put the pieces together, right? Surely she can read between the lines enough to know spontaneous bangs does not equal a mentally stable child.

But, no, she doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t ask me if I’m okay. She doesn’t tell me I look awful. She doesn’t even ask why I look like a feral mongoose—whatever the hell a feral mongoose looks like.

Instead, she says, “You cut your hair.”

“Yeah,” I respond, then wait to be told off.

“Did you vacuum?”

I stare at her. “Huh?”

“The hair.” She points at my head as if I might be wondering what hair she’s talking about. “I hope you vacuumed or it’s going to end up all over your room. I got a hair stuck in my foot once and let me tell you—”

“Yeah, I cleaned it up,” I say before her anecdote can go any further.

“Okay.” She watches me in silence for a moment and I watch her back. She doesn’t say anything else.

“I need to get some stuff from the store,” I say finally. “Some candy for my friends.”

“Okay,” she says, not questioning that either. “We can go tomorrow.”

[outtakesfrommars]

The Heart

“You will never be able to escape from your heart, so it’s better to listen to what it has to say.” - The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

My heart is illegible. My heart is a drunken man muttering incoherently from the gutter, face down in a puddle of spilled liquor and dirty rainwater. My heart is a scared kid on a stage, their mouth just a little too far from the microphone to be picked up. My heart is someone screaming in a crowd at a concert, drowned out by the uproar raging like an ocean around them.

My heart is shouting at me from the other side of a stadium, a pane of soundproof glass between us. No matter how hard I strain, I can’t hear a word. And every time I guess, I guess wrong.

I think I know what I want until I don’t. I think I’m making the right move until it’s wrong. Until I end up on the floor in a pile of lasagna. Or hiding behind a trash can. Or having a panic attack in an unfamiliar city. Or running from the cops like I’m some kind of juvenile delinquent from a badly written crime drama.

I wasn’t meant to be in any of those places. I haven’t fit in any of these situations that I’ve forced myself into. None of this is what I wanted.

I don’t get it. If I’m not meant to run but I’m not meant to stay here, how the hell is anything supposed to happen?

[outtakesfrommars]

Christmas Gifts

“What’s this?”

“A present.” The silence which followed apparently led Rowan to believe the message was unclear.  “For you.”

Nora stared at the small box in her hands, holding it gingerly as though the golden ribbon on top was a detonator, as if it might explode at any moment. It didn’t look all that threatening to the untrained eye, but Nora knew there were implications behind shiny red paper and a frilly bow, no matter how messy the corners were or how many rolls of tape were evidently murdered to keep it all together.

“Why?” she demanded, giving Rowan a suspicious look.

Rowan smiled, visibly confused. “Because it’s Christmas.”

“I didn’t get you anything,” Nora replied, pushing the offending box back towards its proprietor.

“Okay?” Rowan gave her a baffled look, sliding the present back across the floor towards her. “That’s fine.”

Nora could hear Rowan’s family in the other room. Her parents and her little sister were laughing in the kitchen, wooden spoons clanging against metal bowls and the disgustingly cheerful lilt of Bing Crosby on the radio as they acted out the part of the perfect family. She didn’t have the heart to be jealous. She didn’t even want that. But it was still strange to be here, surrounded by twinkling lights and gaudy tinsel, the smell of scented candles and baking cookies and a real evergreen tree all assaulting her at once.

December hit and Rowan’s house became something out of a movie. It wasn’t that difficult, it was already a post-modern, suburban fever dream. Throw in a garland and a creepy vintage Santa, a light dusting of snow and you were all set.

Most of Nora’s Christmas Eve’s were spent quietly at home, watching a movie in her bed and hoping her mother would choose to stay out for the whole night, rather than coming home drunk at two a.m. and tripping over every piece of furniture between her and the couch. She didn’t have a problem with it. It was bizarrely comforting in the way familiarity often was, yet when Rowan had invited her to spend Christmas Eve at her house, she hadn’t managed to refuse.

Still, Nora knew how this worked.

“Isn’t that the whole point? You get me something, I get you something? It’s like a communist birthday party.”

The look she received in response to that comment was beyond confusion. It was a look suggesting she might have the psych ward called on her any minute.

Rowan did not pick up her phone, however. She picked up the disastrously wrapped box and placed it directly in Nora’s hands. “First of all, that’s fucked up. Second, it’s Jesus’ birthday and I’m not religious but I’m pretty sure he wasn’t a commie. Now would you just take the present?”

“But—“

“It’s fine,” Rowan interjected. “I wanted to get you something so I did. That’s the point of it. I don’t expect anything in return. And besides I know you’re…” Her sentence trailed off and her expression faltered, like she’d only realized what was leaving her mouth halfway through.

Nora didn’t grant her the gift of letting it slide. “Poor?”

“I wasn’t gonna say that.”

“Yeah, you were. It’s fine. You can say it.”

“Nora…” she sighed.

“Go on.”

Rowan shut her eyes, looking about as uncomfortable as Nora had ever made her, which was saying something considering how often it happened. It was sort of like a game for her.

“I don’t want to. I’m sorry, I didn’t want to make you feel bad.”

Nora turned the present over, becoming more relaxed as the situation shifted into her court, the sword no longer pointed at her own throat but being held in her hands. “Well you kind of are right now.”

“I’m sorry!”

Nora’s mouth twisted in thought, tilting her head as though forgiveness were a hefty decision. “Hm…”

It took a solid five seconds for Rowan to catch on.

“You’re a dick.”

Nora grinned and began peeling the corner of the gift, her discomfort returning the moment Rowan fell silent and began watching her. Inside the paper was a box, also taped up tightly. It wasn’t difficult to get through, but picking and peeling her way through the layers felt like picking a lock to a safe. A safe with a bomb inside. It was still a bomb.

Finally, the lid came loose. Inside was a little string of LED Christmas lights attached to a battery pack, complete with a set of double-A batteries.

“For the palm tree in your room,” Rowan explained before she even had a chance to ask. “I thought, you know…maybe your space could use a little Christmas spirit.”

Nora stared at the string of lights, a dangerous prickling sensation behind her eyes. “You are so lame,” she stated, hoping to divert some attention from the way her vision was starting to blur.  

“If you don’t like them that’s okay,” Rowan said quickly. “I thought it was cute but I know that’s not really your thing. Seriously if you don’t want them I don’t—“ She reached for the lights but Nora snatched them away, flashing a look that wasn’t dissimilar to the expression a cat makes when assaulted with unsolicited head scratches.

“You can’t take my Christmas gift.”

“No, I…” Rowan stared at her, utterly lost. “Okay.”

Nora attempted a cold look, but the corners of her mouth revolted. “Thanks. Dipshit.”

Rowan grinned, making no attempt to subdue the expression. She could’ve burnt out the sun with that look. “You’re welcome.” She looked down, picking up a discarded piece of wrapping paper and tearing it apart methodically. “You can spend the night by the way, if you want. I know it’s Christmas Eve and you probably want to spend it with your mom but…just in case. I asked my parents and they said it’s okay. If you want.”

For a moment all Nora could do was stare, that vile burning sensation in her throat and her eyes once again. Thank god Rowan wasn’t actually looking at her. If Nora hadn’t been internally crumbling, she would’ve poked fun at her for how many times she’d said “if you want,” but there was no way for her to speak without murdering the remaining shreds of her dignity.

Rowan was the only person in a fifty kilometer radius who still thought she was somewhat cool. She couldn’t ruin that.

“Oh…” she managed, her voice quiet and monotonous and devoid of any emotion that might give away just how grateful she was for the offer, how taken aback she was that this girl still wanted to spend time with her after everything she’d done. “Okay.”

Rowan looked up, eyes wide. “Okay as in you’ll stay? Or okay as in thanks for the offer but I don’t want to hear another crude rendition of Frosty the Snowman from your mother so I’m gonna dip?”

“Okay, yes,” Nora clarified, laughter in her voice. “And your mom’s song was really good. I especially liked the part about his—”

“No, no, no, no, no.” Rowan covered her ears and began singing loudly like a child. “I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to be reminded. Say another word and I’ll revoke my invitation.”

“Too late.” Nora grabbed her hands and pulled them away from her ears. “You’re stuck with me.”

Rowan froze, hands still ensnared in Nora’s as she stared at her, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights. She grinned again, still sun-melting and nervous. “Well, shit.”

[outtakesfrommars]

Polychromatic Fingerprints

“You did this last night.”

Ms. Singh was either psychic or an incredible judge of character. Nora had only been in her class for three months, but it seemed the art teacher had already caught on to her ways—namely the fact that a project set to be worked on daily throughout the term, culminating in a piece to be presented on the final day of class, was not her style.

Unfortunately for Nora, “not her style” wasn’t a valid excuse for not completing an assignment, so after brushing off the creeping hand of the deadline for as long as she possibly could, she’d had to actually sit down and produce a piece of work. Just as Ms. Singh had pointed out, this had been done the night previous.

It was almost funny, in a sad sort of way, because the assignment really wasn’t that bad. It was relatively open ended, and when it came to public school art classes, that was a rare blessing. The students were allowed to make anything they wanted with any medium, the only criteria was that it had to be a regular endeavour throughout the term, and that it had to express some facet of who they were.

This was where the issue lay. Nora didn’t know who she was, and even if she did, she wouldn’t be sharing it with some woman she barely knew and thirty of her most dull-witted and pretentious classmates. She wouldn’t be smearing it on a canvas and hanging it in the hall for people to gawk at. Her story, her identity, everything about who she was—it wasn’t made to be displayed, it was made to be hidden away until it was inevitably dragged out of her in a court-mandated therapy session thirty years down the road.

But she couldn’t say any of that to Ms. Singh.

“No I didn’t.”

Ms. Singh reached forward and grabbed her wrist. Every muscle in Nora’s body tensed, preparing to rip her arm free and flee the room. Her heart fluttered in her chest like a trapped animal. There were a million outcomes playing at once in her head, a million verbal lacerations that were about to be cast at her. She braced herself and waited for the reckoning.

It didn’t come. Instead, Ms. Singh gently pulled her arm forward, holding it up for Nora to see.

There was a smear of dark orange across her skin, the exact same shade that covered most of the canvas laying on the desk beside her.

“That’s um…I was painting something else. With the same paints. Last night. So…”

That was believable.

Ms. Singh released her arm and swiped a hand across the canvas, holding up her own finger for Nora to see the bright stain which exposed her.

“It’s still wet,” Ms. Singh said.

“Huh…” Nora pursed her lips. “Acrylic…takes a long time to dry.”

That simply wasn’t true. Someone who knew nothing about art supplies may have bought it, but this woman literally spent her life surrounded by paint. It seemed the fumes hadn’t caused her deduction skills to deteriorate. She didn’t say a word, just held Nora in a steady, disappointed gaze.

Was this what it felt like to be given the silent treatment? Responded to with nothing more than dead eyes and tight lips?

Maybe she needed to stop doing that.

“Okay, I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not,” Ms. Singh replied. This woman really got her. “The point of this assignment was not for you to finish something and hand it in to me, Nora.”

“Wasn’t it?” Nora laughed. “That’s literally the whole point of school. Why would anybody do anything if it wasn’t to hand it in, get a grade, and move on?”

Ms. Singh gave her a look, though Nora couldn’t quite decipher the meaning behind it. “Is that what you think?” she asked. “That you’re just here to get good grades and move on.”

“I never said good,” she muttered.

Ms. Singh sighed and when she spoke again, her voice was hard and cold as ice. “Nora, you’re not doing this for me. And if you’re only here to pass my class and move on, then I don’t want you in my class at all.”

Nora’s heart dropped into her stomach. She opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out.

Ms. Singh’s expression softened. “But that’s not why you’re here, is it? You want to be here. You want to learn. And I want to help you.” She stood up and walked around the desk, eyeing the still-wet painting as she did. “Which is why I’m not going to grade this.”

“What?”

“Go home and try again. Take some time over the break and really think about what you want to do. Spend some time with your art, let it speak to you and in turn you can speak to me and to the world. You have things to say, Nora, I know you do. And I want to hear them. I don’t want to see a half-assed painting of a bunch of flowers. This isn’t you.”

“You don’t even know me,” Nora said stubbornly, raising the defenses once again.

“No,” Ms. Singh hummed. “But I’d like to. And I know this isn’t it. This is somebody who loves making art, and is very good at it…” Her hand hovered above the painting, tracing the lines of the petals and the shadows beneath them, the highlights and curves of the pot which they rested in. “I can tell that you’re very talented. But I can also tell this was made by someone who didn’t want to make it. It’s rushed. Lifeless.”

“I didn’t want to do it,” Nora admitted, wondering immediately why she was speaking so freely with this woman who didn’t know a thing about her but was acting like she knew everything. “I don’t like making things that someone else told me to do.”

Ms. Singh nodded knowingly. “I get that. Which is why I left it up to you to decide your subject.”

“But you’re still telling me to do it.”

Her teacher sighed. “Yes, Nora. Unfortunately, that’s my job. If I never ask you to do anything, never ask to see your work, never give you any feedback, then you might as well go home.”

“Fine by me.”

“Oh, I’m sure it is,” Ms. Singh said, a note of sarcasm in her voice that surprised Nora. “Don’t think I don’t know your type. If you weren’t interested in my class you wouldn’t even be here.”

There she was, accusing Nora of fitting a certain mold again. Of being a certain type. She hated it. It filled her with anger and frustration and the desire to revolt.

But it was accurate. She hated that it was accurate.

“I want you to do this again, but I’m not going to give you a deadline.”

Nora stared at her. “How does that work?”

Ms. Singh shrugged. “You tell me. I want you to create a piece on your own time, on the timeline that you want to work with. I don’t want it to be rushed and I don’t want it to be forced. I want you to actually enjoy making it. No deadline. No guidelines. Nothing.”

“Nothing,” Nora repeated disbelievingly. “So it can be anything I want?”

“Anything,” Ms. Singh confirmed. “When you’re done, I want you to come show it to me. And I hope that I’ll be able to see more of you in it than this.”

Nora was quiet for a moment, contemplating the proposal. It was a good offer. No teacher had ever given her complete free-reign of a project with absolutely no deadline. It was almost too good to be true, but she knew that it wasn’t, because what Ms. Singh was asking for was bigger than the reward of total freewill.

She wanted realness. She wanted vulnerability. And that was a price Nora wasn’t sure she was willing to pay.

“Okay,” she said finally.

Ms. Singh smiled. “Have a good break. I look forward to seeing what you come up with.”

Nora was looking forward to it too. Mainly because she hadn’t yet decided whether she was going to really commit to an honest piece, or simply try a little harder to forge some pantomime of the truth.

[outtakesfrommars]

Valentina’s Meltdown

The pieces weren’t lining up. Literally.

She’d done everything right. She’d measured every length of fabric multiple times and cut with the precision of a machine. There was no way it could have gone wrong, and yet the pieces weren’t fitting together. The right sleeve was twice the length of the left; the collar was a strange shape; and every time she attempted to pin the seams on one side, the other became uneven.

Valentina sifted through the sheer paper that had guided her careful cutting for the last two hours. Everything looked right, she couldn’t understand what the problem was.

She took a deep breath to ground herself and tried again. She lined the edges up, folded them over and pressed the iron down directly on her fingertips.

“Fuck!” The iron went clattering to the ground, splitting open and spilling a steaming pool of hot water across her bedroom floor.

Footsteps came from the direction of Emiliano’s office and there was a knock on her door. “You okay in there?”

“Yeah!” Valentina called through the finger in her mouth, attempting to keep the twinge of pain out of her voice. “Just dropped something.”

“Was it an elephant? Sounded like you almost broke the floor.”

Even through the door she could hear that goofy smile on her father’s face. She wished she could’ve responded to his awful joke with more kindness, but she barely had time to acknowledge it. “Yeah,” she called again, her mind already moving on to the next issue.

She grabbed the towel hanging on her bathroom door and threw it down, mopping up the water with her foot while still nursing the burn on her fingers. She was never this clumsy. She was always careful with the iron. She’d burned herself a few times, sure, but never that badly.

And now her fabric was wet.

She didn’t have time to wait for it to dry—if her piece wasn’t finished soon she may as well have given up on ever having a fashion career, dropped out of school, and hoped her dad’s would hire her as a gardener so she’d have a place to stay.

She lifted the sopping fabric and shook the worst of the spillage onto the towel. If the iron didn’t want to cooperate with her, she’d just have to hope the seams would. She folded the edge over again and stuck a pin through. She made it about two inches down the fabric before sticking a pin straight into her finger.

“Shit!” she hissed, pulling her hand back to see a spot of bright red blooming on her skin. It was bleeding more than a small pinprick should have, and before she could do anything to stop it, the blood dripped onto the pale yellow fabric she was working with. “No.” Her heart stuttered and tripped over several beats. “No, no, no, no, no.”

She snatched up the wet towel and began furiously scrubbing at the bloodstain. If she’d been thinking straight, she would’ve known what a terrible idea that was. Unfortunately, she wasn’t thinking at all, and the only thing she managed to do was smear the blood further.

“Shit.” She stared at the mess she’d made, frozen in terror as she watched her entire future crumbling. “Shit shit shit.”

This wasn’t a minor screw up. This was catastrophic. This was her entire life disappearing before her eyes like hot water soaking into the carpet. This was the end of all things.

She had spent months working on her portfolio for this internship. She’d spent years planning for it. She’d spent her whole life working towards this moment, and now the whole thing was falling apart because she was too incompetent to make one simple shirt.

It was utterly ridiculous. She was good at this. She was really good at this. Fashion and sewing and creating new things—all of that was her thing. It’s what she was known for. It was what she really excelled at. Her whole life she’d been praised for her ingenuity, for her sense of style. She wasn’t a quitter, she was a problem solver. Careful and confident and hardworking.

Now she was sitting on the floor, bleeding and burnt and smearing her own blood across a shirt that just wouldn’t line up.

She was a failure.

All the time she’d spent letting people stroke her ego and pretending to be worthy of their praise had been nothing more than that; pretending. She was a fraud. A liar. She’d never been worthy of any of it. She wasn’t better than anyone else. She wasn’t even mediocre. She was just good at playing pretend.

She dropped her head into her hands and let out a frustrated scream. That was a bad move in a house with not one, but two concerned father figures.

Footsteps again, but no knock this time. Her door swung open and David stood there, looking down at her with a worried expression.

Valentina sat up immediately, her back rigidly straight and her eyes opened a little too wide as though that might hide the tears threatening to spill from them. “Hi,” she said, her voice sounding disturbingly calm, even to her own ears.

David stared at her calculatingly. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “Yeah, I just dropped something.”

His eyes drifted to the mess behind her, the towel and the blood and the broken iron she’d forgotten to actually pick up, and then back to her—cradling a bleeding finger with a look in her eyes that suggested she was one loose thread away from losing it completely.

“And I poked myself,” she added.

“You poked yourself,” he repeated disbelievingly. “It looks like something died in here.”

Something had—her ego and any chance she’d ever had at getting the internship and starting a successful career. But she kept that to herself.

“I’ll clean it up.”

David looked at her as though that hadn’t been his concern. Valentina flashed a smile with the intention of calming his nerves and reached for the shattered pieces of the iron, scooping them up with one hand and trying not to drip more blood on the carpet or the fabric laid on top of it.

“Valentina, why are you—”

“What’s going on in—” Emiliano poked his head around the door frame and his face fell. “Oh.”

Val turned her back to both of them, focusing on furiously scrubbing at her mess and hoping they’d take the hint. They didn’t.

“So that’s the elephant,” Emiliano said, his voice coming closer. “Come here.”

“It’s fine,” she insisted, still focusing on the broken pieces and fighting against the growing lump in her throat. “I just poked myself.

“Yeah, yeah, ‘tis but a flesh wound,” her father’s tired voice sighed.

Valentina felt a hand on her arm, pulling her up and away from the mess and guiding her towards the bathroom. Emiliano turned on the tap and gently pulled her hand under the stream of water before sifting through the cupboard in search of first aid supplies.

Her bathroom was in just as much disarray as her room was, which Emiliano seemed deeply affected by—not because he was offended by the mess, although it did bother him, but because Valentina had never let her space get this bad. Usually she was as meticulous and painfully hygienic as he was. This was unsettling.

Within a few minutes, however, the supplies were located. Her burns were dealt with and her flesh wound bandaged. When they returned to her room, the mess had been cleaned—along with most of the other debris that had cluttered her bed and its surrounding area. It was still a disaster, but it looked infinitely better. The yellow fabric had disappeared along with David, and she could only assume he was downstairs in the laundry room, working some sort of fatherly magic to get the stains out.

A steaming cup of tea rested on her nightstand.

“Take a break,” Emiliano said, pulling her close and kissing the top of her head. “Okay?”

Valentina nodded but didn’t move as he crossed the room, pulling the door over but not shut behind him.

A break sounded nice. A break sounded fantastic.

Unfortunately, she didn’t have time for a break.

[outtakesfrommars]

Love Letter

My pretentious, gay ass chose “Love Letter” by Slyvia Plath as the centerpiece for this disaster. Because my own words aren’t enough, I need to drag someone else’s into this too.

Sorry, Sylvia.

I sneak into my mom’s office and print it out with my heart pounding in my throat. If she comes in and asks what I’m doing, I’m done for. I’m not trying to be dramatic, but I would quite literally die.

I get my poem printed with no interruptions and hurl myself back up the stairs, only stopping to breathe once my bedroom door is firmly shut behind me. This is ridiculous. I settle down at my desk, take a deep breath, and wonder what the hell I’m actually doing.

No one’s ever going to see this besides Zara, and she wants nothing to do with me anyway, so what do I have to lose?

Everything, screams the little voice in my head. Absolutely everything and then some. What you have now is good. You go to school, pine hopelessly over Zara from a distance, then come home. She knows nothing, and you keep your dignity. Everybody’s happy.

But I’m not happy, am I?

Every day it’s the same routine. I have conversations with Zara in my head that are never really going to happen, fall more and more in love with some idealized version of her I’m not even sure exists, and sink further into this hopeless pit of despair and disgust with myself with no chance of ever getting out.

I can’t call myself a fly on the wall because flies actually move. They buzz around, bashing into windows and landing on food and generally being obnoxious. I’m not even taking up space. I barely exist.

That needs to change. Not because I’m looking to get something inspiring and profound out of my life, but because this stagnance is going to drive me insane if I don’t do something.

That “something” doesn’t need to be this. There are a million other self-destructive things I could be doing right now that would have smaller consequences than this. I could go spend all my money on useless things I don’t need, like holographic dinosaur stickers. I could eat an entire package of Oreos all by myself and then moan about feeling sick. I could cut my hair. I could take a page out of Nora’s book and dye it bright pink.

Anything would be better than this, but my mind is made up.

This poem is one of my favourites, I write. It’s always made me think of you because—

Hold up, that’s creepy as fuck. Who sits around reading poetry and thinking about people they don’t even talk to?

Me, apparently. But Zara doesn’t need to know that.

I scratch that line out.

This poem illustrates the beauty of—

Alright, now I sound like I’m writing an English essay. Mrs. Wallace would probably eat this up. Too bad it’s my ego on the line instead of a letter grade.

I try explaining the poem and its relevance a few more times, each more cringe and pretentious than the last, then I rip my paper to shreds.

I don’t mean to do it, my hands just start moving, pulling apart my paper until it makes a little mountain on the desk in front of me. I’m supposed to be a writer, putting my deepest confession into words shouldn’t be this difficult, but forming sentences is worse than pulling teeth when you know what’s coming in the aftermath.

Humiliation. Ridicule. Probably a twelve hour panic attack.

I groan and rest my head on the pile of paper like it’s the pillow on my deathbed, my final breath stirring a few pen smeared scraps to the floor.

This is impossible.