From the end of the room, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” plays faintly in the sounds of moaning and running water, and between the spacing of my feet, I can see a door partially open, and steam is pouring out. Cold air is blowing down on me from somewhere, but my body is burning. I’m naked as my eyes pull back from the door, looking down at my blistered vagina, weeping above the bright red skin of my legs; both wrists rubbed raw; circular burns, like cigarettes, pushed deep into the inside of my arms; and the dark bruises forming across my stomach. I bring my hand up and run it along the jagged cuts on my breasts, and as I move further up to my face, I feel how swollen my eyes are. My fingers pass back down over the dried liquid that flakes off my cheeks as I touch my mouth. Tracing the splits in my lips, my tongue pushes against my teeth, and they feel loose. I want to scream, but I can’t.
As I dig my nails into the bed and pull my body across the soiled mattress, my legs drag through a pile of photographs that fall with me to the floor. Crawling over a Polaroid of me: knife at my neck, hands tied, something shoved in my mouth, and bleach pouring down, I gag, sliding across the damp hardwood, lost in the room’s fog, until my face hits against something cold and wet. Reaching up, my hands shake on the hard surface as they press into the steam. My ears ring, and everything goes black.
I hear my name as blood runs off my necklace and falls through the still-summer air down toward the ocean. Joy Division gets louder as I grip the railing and look back at him, standing naked beside the open balcony door, next to someone in the shadows. The word “ENOUGH,” written in condensation, drips down the glass. And he’s slowly getting harder as they both sing out to me, “but love, love will tear us apart again,” and when he smiles, I turn away.
It’s then, when hundreds of birds fly across the shimmering gold water and into the sunrise, that I see just how fucking beautiful life can be.
***
A piece of ash floats down through the growing light and onto the heart-shaped locket as I watch the world burn brightest just before dawn.
