Harlot

I feel disgusting. Katie said he wasn’t the only guy I clung to at her party. God.

I want to call my brother.

People ask, “How are you?” I want to tell them. I hate myself and I don’t want to be such a slut and I don’t want to wake up in strange rooms and I don’t want my brother to hate me and I’m too much of a coward to accept my sister’s death so instead I pretend she never existed and I miss when Mommy and Daddy loved me and I hate Katie, I fucking hate her and she hates me too and I feel so angry and so sad and sometimes I sit alone in my room, on the bed that has housed far too many men and cry and cry and cry and sometimes I press my fingers against the hot iron while I do my hair and hold it there until I know I’ve left a mark and sometimes I look at the pills in the cabinet and wonder how many I’d have to take to die and I want something else, I want something better and I want to like myself and those around me and I want to live a decent life and God, someone save me.

But I know that’s not what they want to hear, so those words stay stuck behind my throat above the weights that have seemed been sewn below my collarbones and the hole and my gut and I tell them, “Fine.”