sybil mars, three.

i. The hollows around your eyes are deeply sullen, glamorous mouth with lips cracked, dry. Your hair is in tatters, a braid half-slipped free, buns tumbling loose, bangs slashed by yourself in the dorm bathroom with the art supply scissors. (You were having a bad day). You wear your mood muderously on your sleeve, your sadness malignant. Why doesn't anyone suffer like you? 

ii. You stretch your smile over your sadness, practicing, coaching, but your eyes look miles away. There is an ocean's worth of wet brimming along your water line when you stare yourself down in a mirror. It keeps you separate from yourself. Audience and actor, you don't know how to choose which one you're going to be. In control, out of it, girl in the morning disappears under a caffeine IV drip and a slick of mint chapstick. "Did you do your readings?" over an arched brow, a pissed tip of the head if a sibling answers no. "Why can't you just get your shit done?" Not fair, not fair, not fair, not fair, deep breath. Something stings behind your eyes. You left school for this? 

iii. I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, I'm so tired, m sotired, msotired, so tired, so tired, so tired. Stop trying.

iv. Long days, longer nights. Flower petals falling; the only sound in the moonlight. Insomnia eats at you, somehow still alive, breathless and senseless, but alive. Awake. Your stomach rolls, nauseous hunger. It's 3AM and the last thing you ate was your mashed potatoes at dinnertime. Dad is dead. In your ribcage the dying embers of daylight are suffocating, lingering in the darkness, keeping you awake in the darkening blue of night expanding along the horizon outside your window. Half a thought, you're out the ledge and sitting on your roof before you've finished thinking about it. Knees curled up to your chest, your thoughts spin up a staircase towards the night sky.

v. They don't even want you here. None of them care.

vi. The stars shift around in your chest, heart beat slowing to try and match the flashing of lightning bugs flickering among the treetops. You think about how many nights you've spent looking up at this sky, wanting to be there instead of on solid ground. You think about leaving. Dreamer, lost in her escapes. You're so lonely, a mountain of your own making. You'd have to leap off a cliff to find solid ground.

vii. Sad girl, jealous girl, judgemental, self conscious, moody, selfish pretender, pretender, pretender. You don't think anyone has their shit together and you're the first one to tell them, but neither do you. You resent them for needing you to stay, resent yourself for making a choice no one asked you to make. Defense in the way of deflection, why didn't anyone ask you to stay? Were they all happy for you to go?