Strings of white sunlight tug at my perception of the green scape,coloring grass tips amber.The wind threads through the cascade of black hairs rippling down my back in a mess of tangled frizzy hairs,and light breaks off when it kisses my acne-flushed skin.Light breaks off when the day’s light rolls down my tan skin.Light breaks off,light leaves as soon as it meets me,all that be sick and gruesome simmering under the guise of brown human skin.

Stop victimizing yourself,Aseba.

Stop…
 Stop…
  Stop…

I do not know what to think anymore.I feel scared,vulnerable,alone in a park.I sit mum on the bench under the drapes of tree leaves,hoping a branch would break off and clunk against my head nice and easy,and it would all be over.Clunk.I hear the sound 
in my head.So sweet,so succinct.I sit there,legs swinging.The branch,did not break.

The bench curls round the tree,backs lined against bark.Backs peel themselves off and go.Time ticks.The sky darkens.And then,I hear the sound of fabric sticking against the bark and unsticking as the person writhed,the sound as though crackling fire.I see the flitting shadows.I do not see her face.

Sobs break into the cacophony of crackling fires and rustling grass.The person is crying.I do not know what to do.I sit with my back to the tree,with my back to her.

”Hello,stranger.”

I blink.”Hello.”

”Don’t tell anyone what I ask of you.Can you kill me?”

“Can you kill me too?”I can feel a plan hatching in my mind,hatching,hatching,hatching.

”Okay.Okay,I will.”

I tell her my address.

See,I do hate living.But I’m far too scared to die.I only have this one life,and the fact that I won’t do much in that overwhelms me,pushes me off the brink.The fact that I for some reason can’t be as good at being a human other are,that I can’t reach the standard of joy no matter how much I have,that I’m not special,and that no one could ever love me.

But maybe,people could care about me more.Maybe,they would take me seriously,if it seemed like I attempted to let someone kill me.I could say my survival instincts kicked in last minute,and I killed her before she could kill me.I’d have scars for proof.People could care about me.

I could be loved.

I chug pills in the evening so that I wouldn’t be deterred by pain.I would be the one faster,stronger,and I would kill that nameless girl.No one would believe my story if I don’t believe it myself.So I sit myself down,and start telling myself I want to die,I need to die,this is the day it would all be over,before my mind runs on thoughts of finishing it all.Yes,I tell myself,heading to the balcony,today,I end my life.

Sometimes I wonder if words could be pretty as life.As drenching sunlight and butterfly kisses of sounds.The soft loose strings in fabric that snag my fingertips warmly,the heat of skin simmering under the breast piece.I let my hand cascade over the area down to my stomach,roll down my ugly stomach rolls,rest at my thighs.

I wonder if I would have the chance to have someone enamored with me touching me so daintily,if only I grew.I will not grow past today.The sky is a song,stars blinking quietly like...