Gardenhead

She's pretty, in the magazine kind of way. Cheekbones that can cut through glass and hair longer than your lifespan, bleached to a horrifying white and rippling like the stream that never ran. You hope she's just as fake as magazines, too, as easy to rip and forget.

He doesn't think so.

Oh, pale skin and ginger hair is lost in her dead river, drowning in static waves of surgical affection. You hate her, because of that, ginger hair and pale skin knows you and you know him, she doesn't know either but she plays anyway and that makes you angry. She's here, where you are and that's not right.

A knife, you'd thought, would change everything. But all it did was make scars that mock the marks of the earth and all they do is tug at skin because they never really did heal just like mummy's words never were quite forgotten. You hate these scars but they remind you trust is a foreign concept. You are not a pack animal. You will die earlier than the others but you will never know hurt again, will never know such inescapable agony.

You will never know.

She leaves with a small smile and pale skin [with his ginger hair] follows her with his eyes, like she's it. That little light he's never quite found.

You hope a car hits her, or a knife twists her.