d6. cecily "scar" leonhardt.

I was born with copper in my hair and oceans in my eyes. I am much like my mother, a spitting image while lacking her inherent insanity. I am everything I wish I wasn't; if I could break the eternal curse of being my mother's daughter, I would.

My mother used to say my name as if it burned her lips to do so. The venom in her words felt like a lash upon my skin, a wound that could never manage to heal. She glared at me with her bright blue eyes, the same as mine but with no kindness. Her skin seeped rancor and her tongue spewed poisons; as much as it was all directed at me, nothing was quite as lamentably familiar as her fury. I suffered my mother's vengeance alone, with no siblings of my own and a father that never seemed to exist in the first place. School was a sanctuary and bedtime was a haven, places I never had to be with Mother.

When I was twelve I had my first kiss. Her name was Lily, and her lips tasted just as sweet as her name sounded. Mother saw us kissing in the garden, and screamed at me to get away from "such a disgraceful girl". I got a beating that night, punishment for my act of defiance against proper behavior.

My mother began to read scripture to me after that night, as if the holy book could ever help me see the light. If lust is a sin, then my lips are a transgressor, a sinner. Her indoctrination was futile; how could I believe in the love of the Lord she spoke of, if I was birthed to such a demon? There was no God in my home, in District Six. His absence is made present in every death, every slain child in each Games arena. If the love of God exists, He has a very cruel sense of humor.

When I was sixteen, I sneaked a girl into the house when Mother was out. Her skin tasted like a sin that was too good to resist, her hair luminescent in the moonlight. Mother came home early that night, too early for my indulgent plans, and I felt a wrath in her screams that I have never seen even in the grieving parents of slain tributes. How disgraceful I was to her, how detestable. My unholy partner in crime slipped out the window in her fit of rage, merely a trail to Mother's howls echoing down the street.

I got beat again that night, the taste of the girl's skin still burning on my tongue like rebellion. I thought it would end soon, as she kicked me into the living room corner; like a punching bag, I waited for the storm to pass. When she stopped, she walked out of the room, and I silently hoped that she would retreat into her bedroom so that I could cry and take care of my bruises in solitude.

She came back from the kitchen with a knife in her hand, and I could only feel confusion as I struggled to grasp onto anything beyond my sore body. She pulled me up surprisingly softly, settling me into a sitting position. Her hand burned like embers as she touched my face. "Good girls do not lust. Good girls read and sit quiet. Abraham sacrificed Isaac to cleanse himself of sin, and I can help rid you of your sin before the Lord."

I remember my face being pressed into the dirty wood floor, a movement too swift for me to realize had even happened. Confusion still overwhelmed my thoughts as I struggled to get free from her grip, but my body was too battered to do much good. I felt the heat of blood across my back, and I screamed once, before watching the walls around me fade away while I slipped into the dark.

I awakened some days later, with Mother and a few strangers around my bedside. I felt strangely tired despite my hibernation-like sleep, and in much pain. The strangers asked me what happened, and Mother gave me a look which silently screamed Do not tell. They told me they were here to investigate my wound, that they would help me if I was in danger at home. I wanted to leave, wanted out of that house immediately. I told them of the sharp blade and the crimson-stained floorboards, the beatings and the scripture.

I don't know what happened with Mother. When I told the visitors from Blackwater, they removed me from the house right after. Moving was extremely painful, but they carried all of my things to the new house, and helped me get to the big mansion of Blackwater as painlessly as possible.

Even now, sitting in my dim room in the orphanage, I do not miss the days of Mother's home. I try to forget the ones where my screams echoed through the hallways, where my blood spotted the walls like a pattern. They took me away from such hell, and even though this mansion drains me of happiness every day, it is better than the emptiness of my past home.

But where there is desolation, there is also beauty; with shaking hands I found gentleness in the soil of my secret garden patch. I told no adult of Blackwater, fearing they will come to massacre the tiny Eden I have grown. Colors bloom from the soft ground, tucked away in the forest that most of District Six fears, and with them my heart tries to mend.

I am finding a way to become myself again, even if I was never quite myself in the first place.