marina gomez / one. fin

For as long as I can remember, Mama has been obsessed with Aisha Aquino and every fiery Aquino that's followed after her.

At first, I barely even really realized it, didn't pick up on the fact that it was a weird thing to have the second games on repeat, didn't realize that it wasn't something that I was supposed to talk about. I had no idea what it meant to be a rebel or what it meant to be a career, only knew that Mama liked spitfires and that I was going to grow up to be one too.

"Eres mágica, mija," she'd say, tuck a strand of my hair behind my hear. "Mágica."

At least I knew better than to speak her language in school.

As I got older, it made less and less sense to me. Not everyone these days pays much attention to those early games, the ones where tributes were in such blatant open rebellion against everything that they had been tossed into. Lennon protecting that little girl whose name I always forget—Aubrey? Audrey? I am always getting the two confused. You'd think I'd better remember the tiny fragile thing who managed to make it to Ninth place in that first bloodbath, but I was always more taken with the girl who had protected her, given her life for a child she barely knew. But anyway, Mama has always had an odd fascination with those early games. Sometimes I can hear her singing Axel Moreau's song to herself while she's cleaning the dishes, reciting Aisha's prayer to herself as she goes through her routine before bed. Angel di mi guarda whispered to herself while she stares down every fine line and wrinkles sinking into her skin. It's not because Mama was a rebel or anyone in her family before her as far as I'm aware, but I kind of think she romanticizes the idea of those rebels. Romanticizes the violence. The stress and the carnage and what it's like to throw yourself on a grenade.

It started to make even less sense to me when she chucked me headfirst into the career academy. How could a woman so fascinated by rebels so desperately want her daughter to be the thing that had killed them?

I think, really, that she just likes the fire.

That's the only way that I know how to make sense of it all, the only way that I can think anything about her and her fascinations makes sense. She doesn't care about Panem or its people, doesn't care about the Capitol, doesn't care about glory—what she likes is the red, and their absolute unwillingness to flinch when it gets spilled.

When I was starting to grow out of childhood and into an adult, Mama used to poke and prod at me, pinch my cheeks and tell me that they didn't belong to a warrior. She hated my chest most of all, something no amount of working out could ever flatten. Secretly, I loved that they were something that she couldn't do anything about, loved that no matter how much running she tried to force me to do, no matter how many practice fights she tried to rope me into, they were never going to go away.

Maybe that's why I've always felt so distant from her. It's not that I'm afraid of the limelight, afraid of having all eyes on me. If anything, that's all I want in this world. I want to get up on the stage and be the most graceful thing that anyone in this entire world has ever seen, I want to move people to tears just by the way my body flows with the sound of the music. I was to create something magic, a revolution of feeling and stars right there on the stage. At the academy, I'm the lightest girl on her feet, a breath of wind that no one can catch.

"Bailarinita," Papa used to coo to me, tuck in a stand of my hair as I crouched down in front of his wheelchair. "Mi estrellita."

He'd do it after every single one of my performances, smile down at me with that sad little smile of his that always said so much more than I wanted it to. It was always telling me goodbye, telling me that he loved me, that he would support me through anything, any choice, any mistake, any life.

Mama has never looked at me like that.

Until I spill blood, all I am is a wet rag.