It has been three years and you still waste your time dancing in front of dirty, mascara-stained bathroom mirrors building yourself up and tearing yourself down until you’re more or less a figment of the person you always thought you’d be at eighteen. Your lips are dark and chapped and you can see the remnants of last night’s tears beneath your eye liner and your babydoll eyelashes that flutter and stick together when boys and girls are supposed to make you nervous (they don’t, but you’ve been raised to whiten your teeth and tuck your bra straps neatly inside your blouse and once in a while you remember what it’s like to make someone blush).
Instead of painting your nails, you pick at your skin, and you’re sure that strangers on the street can’t see the bloody scars beneath your jeans, but the ones you let close enough ask you where they came from and you tell stupid lies that no one really believes. Sometimes you wish your lips were soft and kissable and pink like other girls’, and sometimes you wish you weren’t constantly choking on the metallic taste of blood behind your teeth.
Your wrists and ankles are bony but you’ll never see your ribcage no matter how many hours you spend pressing bruises into the bones.
Girls are dirty and messy and spend too much time cleaning up messes they never made.
