hunter zodiia } district seven . done

Most children cry when they are born. It's a simple fact of life, an expected inconvenience. It's a beautiful kind of bitter melody, an assurance that all is right and that life will go on. I was silent, they say. Mouth opened wide and yet only tears rolled down my cheeks. All that echoed about the room was the soft screech of a heartbeat monitor.

Until that too faded into one continuous scream and I was pulled from a dying woman's arms.

I didn't have a father. Well, I'm sure I had one at some point but he was not around to sign my birth certificate next to the drops of my mother's blood. They didn't know her name, didn't know her story. She simply stumbled through the door with her hand around her stomach and she was screaming for help. Not for her, but for me. For the broken child in her belly.

I like to think my mother was a good person. I like to think she's smiling at me, wherever she ended up. Her dying wish was to name me after the trees, name me after a string of sinew pulled taught and an arrowhead carved from obsidian. Hunter was the last word to leave blue-tinged lips.

And so Hunter I was.

I've known no other family than them. My brothers and sisters to which we share no other connection than last name. I don't look anything like them I don't share so much as one feature that I can find upon lighter-skinned, fair haired housemates. In they end, they are more than that. They are my siblings, my family.

They're not broken like me either. They can make sounds, their throats hum with life every noise they push past their lips and I am cold. It feels as though I am trapped within an eternal winter, every sound I wish to make lost within howling winds and even the whispering trees are louder than I will ever be. I am jealous of the birds with their soft squealings and happy chirps. I am jealous of their mournful whistles and sorrowful songs.

My voice has only ever been that of a pencil across paper. A torn notebook is all that I have, every word I have ever spoken has been etched into this parchment. Every answer, every question I ever wished to voice is trapped within these pages and it is torture having to see them decay as the graphite fades having never been brought to life.

There are much more potent ways to scream, I have found. Ones that do not fade as the years drag on, that are permanently soaked into parchment and everything I have ever felt is cataloged with heavy paper sat upon my easel. Every song I wish to sing is splashed with vibrant colors and every sob I have never found drips down the paper with careful placement.

I am trapped within my own mind, a prisoner to my thoughts.

And I wish I could tell them that, but I just can't find the words.