nellie {district seven} finished

[jj jenkins d7. ✨ zozo.]

nellie | d7 | sixteen???
this entire app is just one big wip
but rave is such a babe and i am so excitedddddd
i am groot we are groot
odair

[jj jenkins d7. ✨ zozo.]

nellie

"You're weird-looking. Like an alien." 

I don't say anything back then. Just smile and nod and accept slammed doors in my face and towering figures above me and a fist to the side of my head every once in a while. He's sick. He's sick. He's sick. He can't help it. There are squishy faces my own age peering down at me as I sit with a blue pencil clenched between my hands but I don't meet their gaze. I simply stare and scribble, shade, shy away, stay in the darkness of their commentary and accept what they're telling me. I do accept it: I look weird. But that's okay. It doesn't bother me at the time.

"What's an alien?"

They don't have an answer to that.

-------- 

"He's sick, Nellie."

I have been told this a thousand times and I can taste their lies - they scatter across my timeline, too many to remember, too many to see.

"Is he going to get better?"

Silence. Pitiful glances. Glazed eyes. Lips pursed together and fists clenched. But no words.

I should get used to my questions never being answered.

-------- 

"Lana, what's different about this time?"

Finally, I am gifted with a single answer that makes no sense to my tired, youthful mind.

"Despair to all who harm the innocent."

-------- 

My favourite colour is purple and I spend my life with my eyes to the pavement, scared of slamming doors and loud noises and screams. Until one day I decide to raise my gaze and stare my fears straight in the eye. Some of them go running. Others linger, as unsure of myself as I am. Fists clench, and when I look down I see red seeping from tears in my skin and blood staining my nails. I'm tired of crying over wounds he left in the walls of our home so I make my own on the outlines of my hands. This time I do not cry, but I still tremble violently. I can feel the monster he created nestling in my chest, the star ready to explode, the hole in my heart destroying everything I touch and swallowing whole universes of hope - not that I had any left to begin with.

Sometimes I snap and shove my sister across the room.

"I'm not a child!" I scream, anger ricocheting through my bones. My sister was born with the strength of my mother and only then do I see what I have inherited - not just the lanky yellow hair the colour of starlight or the snarl that makes me feel inhuman. (Catching glances of myself in windows never holds my attention but I have never liked glass - it shatters too easily.) Rage consumes me and there are moments that I have no control over it, desperate to feel strong, a thirst to be proven right for once in my life. I am scared of a lot of things, but that is the worst of them all.

I tell myself that I am strong enough to take the weight of my broken family on my shoulders. I tell myself that I'm not afraid to hear the truth about my father. I tell myself that I'm not the girl behind the closed door with a hand on my shoulder pulling me back to an unknown I know all too well. I tell myself that I can be just as good, just as brave, just as valiant as my sister. I tell myself that I'm not like him - unpredictable, explosive, violent.

Liar, liar, liar. Destruction is in my blood. It's inked across my skin and my very existence.

I was taught that loss could forgive unspeakable acts and how to keep my mouth shut. It's easy when you don't ever get a chance to speak, when Wait!'s and Let me see's are drowned out by angry footsteps. I watched their skin turn purple and blue yet mine was never stained with another's intention. (In years to come I would often see red streaking skin of long limbs, caused by unconscious intentions of my own doing.) Stumbling into the darkness of unknown by frantic hands that don't want you to see the destruction left in my father's path, I was left to create the truth from what I could summon on my own. There are endless gaps in my memory and I remember them all. They start with words falling out of my tiny mouth and finish with a hand pressed against my cracked lips, swallowing them back down again before the truth could be coughed up. After a while I learnt to press my own palm against my teeth and be rid of curiosity altogether.

I was taught that love is two things: a fist for a kiss and my sister's trembling hands. (Put two and two together and my heart will surely stop.) If my father loved my mother then I should tattoo those four letters onto my own hands and strike my lover as if to break his shell and send his soul pouring through his skin. If my sister loved me then love is blind, love is fleeting, love is full of secrets and questions that will never be answered. My tired eyes are grey like his - empty of colour and drained of life, and for the last time (because I swear it will be the last) they leak salt and fury and bittersweet endings. I decided that love was not worth my time and as I emptied my heart into the sky I set my soul alight.

My mother's words still haunt me. "Just like your father-- you know you're just like him."

Death explodes, and a star is reborn.

His destruction is my rebirth.

[jj jenkins d7. ✨ zozo.]

i am groot we are groot and i think i am also finished?

[Python]

I LOVE HER

ACCEPTED