Citrus Girl

I know the way these things begin. I don't know why I want to say they begin with a spritz of Obsession, or the ninth spritz of Obsession of the day. Imagine what that must do to a body? Imagine what it must've made him want to do to me. Peel me like an orange. Pull my armor off and just bury his mouth in what lived below. But what about me? What about the citrus girl who had to move through that world with her skin removed? Imagine spritzing perfume with an alcoholic base onto that? When I wasn't dissolving into black rooms with you, that's what it felt like. Every time I couldn't keep up with a conversation, every time I didn't fit into Kenn's world, every time your students knew more about the state of your health and whereabouts than I did. I picture myself at seventeen, practicing patterns in the middle of the ballroom because I wanted someone to see me, be proud of me, love me for the young but striving version of a person I was. But no. It was always just alcoholic smears across open skin by men who only wanted to fuck me, and a sly twinkle in your eye when our eyes would meet across the ballroom. You knew I loved you in my innocent way. You knew I was drowning in your death. I know you knew. I could tell in what lived in our gazes whenever we had a moment, which we so rarely did. Which I would have killed for more of, but you so seldom took. Not that I'm mad at you. You were dying. I don't blame you, but I think because of you, I ruined my own life.

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