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You saved my life he says I owe you everything. You don't, I say, you don't owe me squat, let's just get going, let's just get gone, but he's relentless, keeps saying I owe you, says Your shoes are filling with your own damn blood, you must want something, just tell me, and it's yours.
━ richard siken, wishbone.
WHAT THE WORLD DOES TO GIRLS LIKE HARLOW CARAWAY IS ABSOLUTELY HORRIFYING.
The world with it's jagged teeth and snarling lungs put pretty little bows on the ugly things and disguises itself, appearing wonderful and joyous.
They put sunshine where there should be gaping holes and chasms in the corners of the earth. Oh, and the monsters that roam this earth ; they call themselves human, but their teeth that hook themselves into your flesh when you are not careful says otherwise.
Appearances, it seems, are all this world cares about, all the Capitol cares about, all they deem important- why dig down when all it has to do is look on the surface?
On the surface, Harlow Caraway is an elusive victor that treads on shattered hearts and crushed souls.
So the rumours say.
They say, the beautiful girl tallies her lovers names in a black book kept in her expensive coat pockets, crossing out their names when they're through with nonchalant strokes. Rarely ever does her hand shake- it's a routin she's gotten used to nowadays. Sometimes she'll strike out their names, before the ink even dries on paper ; that's how replaceable they are to her, nothing more than a scribble on dead trees.
They pass by in shades of tan, blurring before her eyes, a convocation of lovers, past and present, coming and going as soon as they arrive. They blend in with one another until their faces become unintelligible in her mind and the only thing that's left is the trembling emotion that eats away at her from the inside out.
What the rumours don't know is that Harlow is having trouble separating those twisted notions created by the nefarious world of the Capitol from who she truly is. Harlow Caraway, in truth, is just broken little girl with nothing to her name but the bleeding heart residing between her ribs. She may have won her games, but a part of her was still left there, right in that godforsaken arena, crouched below an oak tree, clutching a silver sword, fifteen year old frail body trembling with dried blood beneath her fingernails and fists like rusted switchblade.
And now she was just something to be used for the Capitol's amusement. For pleasure, for emotional dependency or for pure vanity and What a tragedy! Because her girlhood was still stitched on her, thread cross-stitched and looped into her spine and the ridges of her hands and feet. It calls to her, yells into her ear scratchy and high-pitched as she tries to walk away. She has a good trick about it - she didn't have to be there, not in her skin. She could wear the mirror, wear the puppet and the Capitol would see their perfect girl, the idea of a pristine little ballerina President Snow had concocted. She would glisten, distilled out of her own blood and venom.
