ace perry, district five | finished

tw: pregnancy complications, homophobia

i was born angry.

or, at the very least, i was born screaming. but i guess every kid comes out that way — only i had an umbilical chord wrapped around my throat, and i was still trying to choke out a sound. "and we were all so scared, but we're so glad you made it out okay;" that's what i tell myself my mom would say if she ever fucking spoke to me.

i don't know if anyone was worried about me, and i don't care. not really. i was the kid that finally pushed her over the edge — four years later she slammed the front door and never came back. of course no one cared, and there's no point crying over shit i can't change. i was an accident, and i almost died, and maybe everyone would have been better off.

but here i am. i guess that's all that matters. i eat up all the food in the house and simone bitches that i need to keep my room clean, same as all my siblings. we're all big fucking disappointments. and she doesn't give up on us. i'd call her an idiot, but then where would that leave me? dead in a ditch, probably, or thrown into the detention center.

there are a lot of excuses for my behavior, but i don't waste 'em — i just say that i like collecting knives, that i'm just a typical boy who likes to get in a fist fight every other day. and maybe that's not actually 'typical' by any definition, but who the fuck's gonna argue? the world runs on toxic masculinity. no one can deny that shit.

i'm messed up, by a lot of things — but i swallow it down like a pill. i gotta accept it. my mom and my dad are my big sister, and my friends are cigarettes and blades. they burn out, and they rust, and i'm always left alone. i'm always someone's burden. and it's not that i hate myself, or that i hate my family, i just hate feeling.

and when things get confusing, i lash out. and everything confuses me. i can't expect simone to answer all of my questions when no one ever bothered to answer any of hers. so i just sit in silence, experiencing all of these emotions that i can't name until i wanna shout. but no one listens, so i don't bother. i wait until someone pushes me and i don't hold back.

because people always have something to say. they wanna talk about me being poor, or how i'm scrawny, as if it's a big shock — and i still let it get to me, even when i know it's true. because i want to be mad. i want to hurt anyone who hurts me; but i guess it's easy to place the blame when you're always hurting. i'm a fucking bomb.

and then the other boys call me gay, and it only makes it worse — and then i'm there, over them, with their blood on my knuckles. even though i think they might be right. even when i know i shouldn't be ashamed of it. but then i remember that i don't have the right to know anything; because simone's too busy trying to help everyone else for me to put this on her shoulders. because it's not a sister's place to tell her brother that his existence is valid.

that it's okay.

all i can fucking do is exist.

i can't be more than human.

but, fuck —

maybe i'm less than that.