lilah west is trying, as she always does, to figure out why no one stays.
it is like lilah is a mere door. she's a gateway drug, with blonde hair and blue eyes that used to lure in guys. but now all they do is stand as a confinement to her reputation, a bondage to her old ways, her old days, when the sky screamed louder than her thoughts and nights were just nights. they were gone when the sun rose.
when a whore wasn't lilah. when lilah wasn't a whore. when her skirts were the right length, and she wore her heart on her sleeve like a yellow post it note that hung like lent on her clothes, when her skin smelled like ivory soap and her hair like wild raspberries in the middle of november. when she washed her sheets with ivory detergent and when she pretended that the bones poking out from her back were scales of a dinosaur, when her hair was a cape in the wind, when her pen was a sword and her dad was a dragon, when her ribcages were stepping stones for faeries and fallacies fell from her pink lips, and innocence dripped from her eyes like blood from the big bad wolf's teeth. when she was fearless.
"we are all born fearless." a man on the street was talking to her. it seemed like it had been weeks since someone had talked to her. since someone had reached out to her like he had. his hands were dirty and weeks of struggle lie under his nails, years of savagery lie under his eyes, pain and suffering lie between his bones. but his touch was soft. he lie a single hand on her shoulder, his eyes were almost louder than his voice.
"but we are instilled with childish fears as we grow up. as the world defines and clarifies in our eyes. we are born to live. then we live to die."
god, they said he was crazy. and then again, they said lilah was a whore. but lilah just wanted to be loved.
it began in the ninth grade when a skyscraper with rough fingertips and bright eyes said she looked nice. nice changed to cute, cute changed to pretty, pretty went to hot, hot went to sexy, sexy went to,"are you coming over tomorrow? you said you would, i just want to hang out with you. you're so amazing," sweet talk turned to a ringing doorbell being answered, by a smirk in blue jeans and apparently her tee shirt was too tight because he kept looking and looking and looking, then he was touching and touching and touching, and she was crying. he was telling he loved her, he was telling her he cared. so she let him care.
god she went home and cried. she felt dirty, so dirty. she sat in a bathtub for hours, but no amount of ivory soap and water could repent the dirtiness she felt, it was inside of her. her organs were withering, her lungs were caving in, she felt a layer of grime settle inside of her and she couldn't wash it away. she couldn't wash her sheets enough for the memories to cleanse themselves. she couldn't pretend that it didn't happen because the boy's eyes were watching her, they were watching. they knew. he told them. he told them.
she was falling into a crowd of rancorous teenagers that think with their lust and their brains- not their hearts. they have no compassion. they have no love, only sex sex sex.
they promised compassion but they wanted sex. she wanted a lover but she gave gave gave, and they never came back. they left. they left every time and they didn't come back, didn't even turn around. she was nothing.
sex.
whore. she wasn't nothing- she was a whore.
she knew it. they knew it. so she lived a whore. died a whore.
fuck society, will it always be this way?
- LILAH WEST THE WHORE
[in which loving is misunderstood.]
