marrow, eight. fin.

I call myself Marrow because it's the first thing to ever be mine.

Amalthea came second. I laid there for two days in the makeshift incubator at the half-ruined hospital with a sticker adhered to the blanket I was bundled in that read in big, scribbled letters 'Marrow' before I was given a name. They weren't sure if I'd survive the first night, so why get attached? Why water a flower if it'd never blossom?

Maybe I hold it against them -- my parents -- for not having any faith in me, in my survival. It was a long time ago too, and my earliest memories are from the war's end, so I can't even recall back then. But it still stings, prickling my pincushion heart. Knowing is a wound. And maybe that's a gross over-exaggeration, some parents never got their kids back from those incubators. Some of them are still buried under the rubble of the other half of the hospital. But that wasn't my fate, and I'm on the side of feelings of the living outweigh the ones of the dead.

My parents never gave me much. I had to give myself the things I thought I earned, store a bracelet or two deep in my pockets when the stall owners turned their heads, their gaze detached from mine. They wouldn't miss them and I would appreciate them. I thought of it as a win-win scenario. And there's a certain kind of comfort having things to call 'yours' brings. And I revel in that, in the warmth of family I've never felt.