ash. district five. fin.

("To be or not to be.
That is the question.")

Beneath my covers is rot. I think I died there a long time ago- I think, everything I was left through my tear ducts and rolled down to chin. I tried to reach out my hands and capture it, but it rose into thin air and dispersed into oblivion.

My bed is a graveyard. I lie there, pull the covers over my head, and let my body sink beneath the surface into the saving arms of the darkness of slumber. And I sleep a lot- I sleep a lot because it is the closest I can get to death. But I will always awaken and my bones will feel like stone. They will weigh be down, pin me against my mattress. It's like I've been buried alive and there's ground above me and I am sealed into a coffin and I can't breathe and I can't move and my heart beats for nothing and-

My bed has arms like vines. They crawl like panthers through the air and wrap themselves around my ankles. No blade can cut them loose, no fire can burn them away. They always pull me back into my covers and tie my wrists and ankles to the bedpost- I will always find myself entangled back in my bed.

Sometimes I say that I am tired. And when I say I am tired, I do not mean that I wish to fall asleep. When I say I am tired, I mean that I wish to fall asleep
and never wake up.

There are nights when sleep eludes me, and I lie awake in my bed in the darkness and contemplate all the ways I could die. I do not cry every time- but sometimes I do and when I do, they were relentless and they show me no mercy, the way they wreck my lungs and burn into my flesh like liquid fire. They will run down my cheeks to my chin and dribble down to my collarbone in fierce rivulets.

I think.

I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I think and I THINK -

until I swear my skull is collapsing against the pressure of my swelling, scarred mind.

My bones are heavy as stone, and yet they are as breakable as glass. They are so fragile- if I fall, they will shatter within me. But when I walk, on some days it feels as if there are stones chained to my every limb, and the air around me has become thick water and I'm drowning and choking and it's filling up my lungs and I can't breathe and I'm drowning I'm drowning and I-

and on some days, these feelings are so minuscule, I feel like I could crush them between two fingers. On some days, I will laugh, and it will feel real- it is real. It is a bout of joy, but it never lasts: my bed has arms like vines. They coil around my ankles and my wrists, and it is back to my mattress where they will always imprison me. Time. After time. My bed has become my grave.

There is a great difference between living and existing, and I had teetered along the blurry line between the two for years, until every friend but three turned their back on me, and I slipped and fell into the mouth of an abyss. I fell- I died. And you cannot resurface from death.

I do not live. I exist- empty. A shell. Time hollowed me, pulled out my insides in strings in larger amounts every year, until there was nothing left to steal. And I have wanted to die stop existing for a long, long time, to fall into the arms of oblivion and them carry me away to anywhere but here. I no longer breathe for me. I breathe for my mother, for my brother, for the three friends that remain. I can rot in the air, but I know if I rot in the ground, they will be destroyed. And I could not bear for them to be ash, too, even if I no longer existed and could not witness their pain. I am tired; I yearn to fall asleep, and never wake up. But I awaken for them. I breathe for them.

I used to wear masks. I used to brush my hair every morning with such care and plan my outfits the night before the next day of school. I used to take a pair of tweezers from the first aid kit in the cabinet and pluck stray hairs from my brows. I used to try and look pretty, so maybe someone would think that I am. So that maybe, just maybe it could heal me.

Until these feelings bled right through the veil and I lost the strength to peel off my mask every night and glue it back on in the morning, and I realized that I was not simply a broken machine missing a few screws. I realized that a twisted mind and a broken heart cannot be fixed. They say time can mend all wounds, but I have waited and waited and waited-

nothing.

I used to dream that I was a rich Capitolite with enough money to sculpt my face how I wanted, to get enough surgeries so maybe, just maybe I would loathe myself less. For it is my father I see in my bone structure- opal-shaped with sharp cheekbones and an angular jaw- and the shape of my nose. I have most of my mother's features, her pale pale skin and eye shape and brows and lips and more, but it is not enough to mask his scars.

It is my grandmother's eyes nestled into my skull. They are like dark stars. They are like the night. Dark, dark, dark. But it is my father's hair- dark, dark, dark- that leaks down my back from my scalp in disheveled waves. Sometimes, to try and lighten its dark color, I will squeeze lemon into my hair until it is sticky when I run through it with my fingers and lie out in the sun. Anything to look less like him, to look less scarred.

I have forgotten what freedom is like- what true, long-lasting happiness is like. I have come to the conclusion that it is not a possibility. Not for me.

And I would like to hate him with every broken piece of me- a part of me does. A part of me still hopes, to no avail, that he could change as he always promised that he would, but every time I turn my head to go back, I remember why I left.

I do not love my father, but I cannot bring myself to hate him either. Not wholly, not utterly. There is resentment and a void between us, nothing more. Not one piece of me could ever love him, not for what he is, not for what he has done. I cannot bring myself to hate my father, so instead, I turn to hatred onto myself. I loathe myself just for having his blood in my veins- he would remind me of its presence every time I would speak to him, before I estranged myself- and the list of reasons grew from there. Perhaps it all stemmed from the fear that his shadow would stick to me, or maybe it's just that I cannot stand to know that I can never undo blood. I share his blood, and I bear his scars, too. They are ugly things.

I remember everything: scars do not fade. I remember how the windows would tremble when my father would scream. It would drag on into infinity and infinity and infinity until my joints would ache from crouching in the darkness of a closet, or my hands would grow so numb I could have sworn they were about to fall off from holding the door to the bathroom shut. I remember the burn of his belt against my flesh, how it would leave scarlet bands across my skin, how it would sting for days.

It was drilled into my head that I was nothing, that I was worthless, that I was a bitch just like my mother and I should behave better and I had no rights and I never had any choices. It was drilled into my head that he was all I had, all I could trust, for if anyone knew what was within me, they would cast me out and name me a disgrace. It was drilled into my head that I was a hideous being.

Years. And years. Until I could not bear it anymore.

I like to think that I do not still believe the things he drilled into my head, but I do. I know I do.

My parents split when I was young, and I always wish that mother would have just taken me away from my father completely and never let him hurt me the way he had hurt her. It isn't right to blame my mother, but sometimes if I think I could, maybe my bones would not feel so heavy.

I have been taught important lessons. I have learned to never place my heart in anyone's hands, to never hand over my trust- humans will break everything they touch. Friends will turn on you, split your spine with a knife. But I didn't know that fathers would, too.

Hours roll by and I have done nothing but write and write and write until all the bones in my hands ache and my fingers have turned white and numb against my pen. I write, until it all feels just a little less agonizing. I write, until it feels almost okay. I have always written- it has always been my solace, since I was a little girl. I grew up crying and sobbing and hiding wherever I could filling journals with scrawls of a fantasy I could never have: happiness.

I used to weave my friends into stories, change their names but leave their souls be. I burned the journals full of stories after the majority of them turned their backs on me to leave me to rot in their shadows. (But joke's on them, because I was already rotting long before they buried me.) They turned their backs, all in the name of the testimony of a girl I had long quarreled with. It rained all over my cheeks when I lit them ablaze, and it was not because of the heat of the flames.