#groundzeroarchive

peach pits and girlhood, it’s not a mistake.

my thighs are cold from the granite counter of my bathroom, the edges lining the skin beneath my knees. the unframed, worn mirror reflects smeared red lipstick, my mother’s oxidised silver earrings, and my kohl-rimmed eyes. outfits litter my bedroom floor, molten moonlight making collages of half-remembered tragedies all over black and white carpet. my skirts are either too loose or too tight, meanwhile all they’re saying is femininity lives in the span of my hips, the length of my hair, and the sheen of my skin.

whenever i’m alone, fresh air smells like ash.

i slip the cheap silver rings off their ceramic dish, sliding them onto my fingers. they make themselves at home at the base of them — nestling between every bone, blunder and bloom — glinting if i poise them just right. the thing snarling and snapping inside my chest is quieter with a little embellishment — muzzled — it no longer crawls up my throat and settles on my tongue. glitz and glamour, the ruinous science of lengthy rituals, has always cloaked the monstrosity that is a teenage girl. they say girlhood is in the plushness of your lips, the arch of your back, the womb in your stomach, and the ampleness of your chest. when they wish to talk about her demeanour, it is about the palatability of her anger, exquisiteness in her suffering, politeness in her appetite and satiability of her desires.

womanhood is first and foremost a sight; the yawning chasm between nine letters gets shamed into ultraviolet silence.

i have always grown around cyanide. sickly sweet when the centre scares me, bristling and nasty when my veils tire and i want to infect. all the world may be a stage, but the curtain drops to a scene no one wants to see, a script that is daringly damning, a cast that will inevitably be wicked, disarmingly charming and cunning in its intellect. the madness of my very existence is all-consuming, and it’s a catalogue free for all to see.

i don’t know where this monologue goes. no flesh that wraps such poison remains untouched, pure, or sweet. the tyranny of the past grovels over the choices of the present, and i’m left holding the infected pieces, trying to put them back together.

for little girls who were catastrophically aware.

we're all unreliable narrators.

phases of persona drown in static while ugly angels inside take centre stage. then one night — when crushed flowers give their fragrance to the air and your forgiveness is supposed to follow — it only takes root in your chest. never makes it up your throat, never into your words, always held fast by sharp teeth.

i am both better and worse than you thought.

it starts when you're very young. the fruits of your mother's labour came out rotten; she gave birth to terror instead of a daughter. your hands will hold what you were never meant to inherit, and it will stain and swallow every person you touch, aching with homesickness. you will smear your existence onto every surface, flinching at the intensity of colour and stench, devastated by your own wicked flesh. proxy wars and burning houses, you are both the crime and the crime scene.

you die so many times; your shadows are bloodful corpses. black is nothing but the darkest red.

something shifts inside; irreparably, irreversibly, irrevocably.

you grow wings, slowly. fury comforts startled little girls when they're infected with woes. fury gets tired of waiting for someone to help. fury cools into ashy white feathers because the spine that once held you up has now rusted over, in need of new pillars. strength becomes you. courage gorges on your spite. paralysis licks at your wounds. blind faith builds cathedrals around your body, sick of sadness that sits in your skin. sacrosanct breaks stalemate, sows seeds for sharper canines in your gums, and biblical rage thrusts you forward whether or not you acquiesce.

you shall not fold your wings to come through doors.

onwards and upwards. soaring takes practice; the smoke from your pyre becomes the wind beneath your wings. hatred comes easy, righteousness comes easier. corrupt vengeance for what died and left. you've come out of the chrysalis too early, it is now your onus — the way the fire licks at those ash-ridden white feathers — your triumph and your collapse both look the same.

a daughter, an urn. a girl, a gun. not who made you, but a third worse thing.

was there ever any difference?

this is a very old story. there is no other version of this story. the ashes come long before the phoenix; you'll outwit fate, but you won't outlast hope, purgatory before infinity.

did you grow up, or did you grow teeth?

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