#trashics

Resolutions are everywhere to be found,　begging for the mundane caress of one more competent to call it into existence.　Like the scales of justice,　seeking a balance,　for every problem that crops up,　rears its ugly head as a villain or a miscreant to be dealt with.　Reach that desired resolution through any means possible　⸻　you are the means　⸻　you are the means.　Carry out the days in training,　set a precedent for your fellow recruits behavior.　They are your sisters.　You have come to learn this while simultaneously faring unconvinced of its authenticity.　To insist upon having a family implicates you in the notion that you are not alone.　You are,　and always have been.　All alone but never lost.　One by one,　stood in glass stalls penetrated by spindly beams of light,　you carry out strenuous training regimens.　Develop your bodies just enough that you can overtake any foe,　hand-in-hand with the strategy embedded into your cognizance,　but not in excess,　not so gratuitous that your distaff physiques broaden,　spread dense muscle through your limbs,　your backs.　The feminization of weaponry has always been an intentional thing,　and you are to embody that unfettered beauteousness without any true justification as to why.

Life,　now,　is markedly liminal,　trapping you betwixt who you were molded into and who you are supposed to be.　Professor’s abrupt passing has left the IRG in a state of disarray;　devoid of grief or a sense of loss,　you spent the subsequent weeks tipping your head at the window while rain cascaded down upon gray-stained city.　Missing him;　wrong word.　You do not miss,　nor your shots nor any presence in your life.　It is an incapability,　incapable of missing him,　incapable of missing his praises and instructions,　incapable of mourning your prior situation.　Twenty-six years spent as a love letter to brutality.　Your life is a hypothesis,　science experiment seeking an answer.　It is impossible to ache for what you’ve never had:　every casual viewing of a coming-of-age film struggles to supplant non-childhood in your memory.　First love,　romance,　sexual awakening;　friendship and peer pressure;　familial conflict;　social hierarchies;　rebellion against authority;　they do not and have never belonged to you.　Staring at yourself in the mirror and reciting cliched movie quotes only stirs unease in your chest,　neighboring that chemically-induced dysphoria expended onto you as a punishment.　You do not know how to be happy.

In hand,　a cotton candy milkshake,　made thick,　nestled for so long in your grip that your skin illuminates white from its gelid bite.　It doesn’t bother you.　Mouse,　sanguine Mouse,　has purchased it for you,　finding some strange delight in the vivid cerulean coloring.　Tilt of your chin,　adjusting to the artificial sugaring firing across your papillae.　Has he purchased it for you specifically because this flavor is blue?　Come to think of it,　you’ve never actually had a milkshake before.　It crosses some replicant line of decadence you never once thought to toe.　Soda or energy drinks,　sure　⸻　you don’t need the benefits they boast,　but expanding your worldview takes countless shapes and forms.　Trying new things with impassive expression,　never allowing your lips to pucker with disgust as your palate develops.　Melted ice-cream equivalent slurry sat in the bottom of your fast food cup　(that strange mélange of fibre pulp and plastic materials,　a half-step toward environmental preservation you know humanity is too selfish to wholly commit to)　is not that.　Over-sweet,　cloying and fighting to tear down every defense of your bland tastes.　It is a familiarity you prefer not to name.　It is there.