sonder

anya

anya rides in her boyfriend's car at night without the headlights on. she takes a swig of alcohol so the car reeks of teenage ignorance and love. adrenaline rushes through anya's veins because it's dark like the caves in carlsbad when the lights are turned off. anya decides if she's going to die young, she wants go in this florescent daze. her ash blonde hair is flowing in the wind and her fingers are tight around her boyfriend's hand so it doesn't matter that she's made of plastic. it just matters that car wheels aren't going to stay on the ground and she's going up and up and up and she doesn't think about coming down.

sometimes anya paints her lips wonders who she's doing it for. not for her boyfriend. not for herself. not for the girls. not for the boys. but she wears tight black dresses and draws lines around her eyes and pinches her cheeks hard enough for them to turn pink.

the heater hums the song of confinement. she's warm though, just like everybody wants her to be. but underneath her skin, she's cold. it feels like the merciless wind is cracking her mind apart—she screams. it feels like rain clouds that have collected the world's sorrows and are dumping their heavy matter all over her delicate body—she aches. but it doesn't matter. her body temperate is normal. so anya feeds herself drama on a silver spoon to distract her heart from the hypothermia. i remember once she was sitting beside a boy named ethan and she wouldn't stop licking her tinted lips. "i think you're hot," she told him. "don't you have a boyfriend?" ethan replied, unfazed. anya rolled her eyes so hard that her mascara covered eyelashes touched her brow bone. "it's not cheating if i'm just looking for attention." oh, naïve anya. when will you allow yourself to breathe?

anya believes in freedom. but to her, it's not a state of mind. it's a place. it's where the road meets the great big sky. it's where anya doesn't have to be anyone but the girl trapped inside, the girl with no facade. and anya is finally true to anya as she is standing through the sunroof with her arms extended because she is flying at last. but these things are too good to ever be true. that's why anya stays in the same place even when she is moving. she will never escape what she knows. and what she knows is that every time, car rides filled with catharsis end up crashing and burning into the stars.