D2 ♋ Holland Waters ♋ DONE

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I can't remember life all too well then, before my father recanted all the "I love you"s and summers teaching me to catch a ball and swing dancing my mother about the kitchen. Before my mother exchanged her emeralds and luxe perfume for rubber gloves and the acrid smell of disinfectant. I can't remember the house that I was born into, just that the three of us danced a lot, in our socks, on the marble floor that reflected our happy faces like a perpetually still lake.

It was a lot bigger than where mom and I live now, in the housekeeping housing of the apartment complex. A narrow nook, a bookmark dwarfed by two massive suites on either side. It has enough room to breathe, glare at your mother, accept her glares in return, but not much else. Maybe grunt at one another if you're feeling particularly affectionate that day.

When the men came to take everything away, and she kept the bronze colored brandy flowing down her throat like a sinner's waterfall my mother didn't bother to answers any of my questions but one: "He got bored of us. Went away to find another love."





It kills her. It's so obvious, too. That she once gave the orders and spilled the stains and tossed out the tips that she now counts on to buoy her from the waters of poverty. I can't remember what her eyes looked like back when she wasn't ashamed to raise her chin and show her face. But I'm sure they weren't the bloodshot rings of defeat they are now. No child is born hopeless, no child expects their fairy tale to slaughter the princess and erect a statue of defeat.

"Holland."

"Eat."

"Sleep."

"Holland."

"Eat?"

"Holland!"

"Sleep, Holland."

Most nights she doesn't come home before I go to sleep, and she's gone by morning. I still get those three essential words a child expects to hear from a mother, I love you, but in the form of fatigued groans and unintelligible mumbles and "Holland? Eat? Sleep."

Even when she's here I'm alone. I'm not here at all, I'm just a prospector. A sick attendee, sitting in the stadium to watch my mother fight off lions with a mop in hand and silent cries for mercy. And I really want to dive in, throw a rope to pull my mother back to shore and shield her from the demons devouring her soul. But my rope never seems to reach, I'm always a matter of inches and miles away from saving her.

I'm a shit writer, never managing to make the connection.





Her name was Sophie.

She was my first ditched day of school, showed me a brick wall behind the library where misguided artists showcased the colors of their heartbreak and rebirth. I traced my finger along the spine of a silver chrome dragon and listened closely for its author to whisper the secret to slaying life through the heart. Sophie pushed me up against the wall and gave me a kiss baked warm in an oven of chain-smoking and stolen Stella from her dad's minibar.

She was my first kiss, and quickly after my first held hand. But not nearly in the cliche budding puppy love of two thirteen year old youths --because cliche was never Sophie's style-- but hand in hand as we ran from wall to wall, masking ourselves under the cover of darkness while the shining light of a Peacekeeper's flashlight stabbed through our evening velvet looking for a couple of kids breaking curfew.

"I'm not your girlfriend, Holland."

"Okay."

"But I will fix you, Holland. I can promise you that."

"I didn't know I needed fixing."

"Everyone needs fixing, Holland. Everyone's a little broken. But you? You're smashed. You're absolutely ruined. And that's why I like you. You're the most broken person I have ever met."

".....that's really fucked, Sophie."

"Yeah, but so are you. But don't worry, I'll fix you."

Sophie was my first dance. She let me step on her steel-toed combat boots without a grimace and let me choose the song after she realized I was all limbs and no rhythm, the salt to the sugar of a waltz. And she didn't say a damn thing when my palms drenched her own in nervous sweat, or when I broke out of her grasp and swung about her living room in every direction the music beckoned me to. She just laughed and danced alongside me.

Sophie instigated my very first ass-kicking. She got a group of former drones she "fixed" to meet me in our usual lot and beat the shit out of me. And when I lay crying up against the brick wall, my silver dragon looking pitifully down upon me, she came to me. She knelt over and kissed my forehead and my bleeding lips and broken arm and whispered, "There, there, you're healing. I'm fixing you. Healing always hurts."

Sophie was my first fight.

"I don't understand why you're so mad, Holland. All I was trying to d--"

"Sophie, shut up, okay? Just shut up for once. Shut up with all that 'I will fix you' bullshit because I know for a fact you have no idea what you're talking about."

"Holland, are you angry?"

"You're fucking right I'm angry! And I have every right to be!"

"This is great!"

"Sophie, you could've had me killed."

"But I didn't, Holland. You didn't die. Now you can take this near-death experience and refle--"

"You're a goddamn psychopath, you know that? A goddamn psychopath. You can't stage near-death experiences, Soph."

"Yes, I can. And I can fix you, Holland. Just give me time and trust me--"

"Stop trying to fix me! Stop with all this diagnosis bullshit and stop. Stop, stop, stop. I honestly thought I was fine when I first met you. Then you broke me, and fixed me again. Then the world goddamn broke me and you fixed me again. Guess what, Sophie? You can try and fix me all you want but I will keep breaking. People like me break all the time. People like me are messes. And no amount of your bullshit 'fixing' can help me."

"Holland, I've done it before and I can do it aga--"

"Leave me alone! I'm done with you, Sophie."




I still break. Almost on the daily, but now I can fix myself. A psychopathic bitch once told me everyone's a little broken. She also told me I was ruined, and in no way as well as all the ways, she was right. When I look unto the ground I can see shards of myself chipping off, ruined. But a ruined person never attempts to pick them back up and fix themselves.



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