alice ballinger. one. cb.

You tumble down the rabbit hole, age seven, and the world spins around you.

At first, it feels like a dream. They put food in front of you on plates that belong in a museum, designs so intricate and lovely they make your head spin, gives you what your new mother calls the woozies. She starts putting special teas in front of you after long, and tells you not to worry so much about Peter and the bars they install on his window two days after you arrive. You forget to eat and you lose twelve pounds, which makes your new mother smile.

"Boys like you better when you're smaller than them," she says, running her thumb along the hollow in your cheek, nail tracing the sharp of your jaw, and so you drop your shoulders, don't hunch, but—you make yourself smaller. "It's good you know that early."

Little girl, little doll, the red queen gets the best of you and the one person you thought might understand what it's like to be slowly choked by the weight of your last name disappears. And then he blames you for his aches, instead of her, and you let wonderland eat you alive. You have arthritis in your wrists from practicing piano late into the hours of the night, putting on private concerts for your mother as she screeches down the halls that it's not good enough. Your scalp is desensitized, has been ripped and pulled at so many times that you think someone could scalp you and you might not notice. Your world is fragile, and you don't dare trying to break it.

You don't think you'll survive the shatter.