Elijah Noble El

She__ all the blood I__e ever shed. She__ every time I__e ever thought of death. She__ every time I__e ever looked at happiness and thought, __hat__ not meant for me.

I moonlight as the greatest actor. I smile. I choose the comedy mask every time. I tell those who worry that I am fine, that I always will be. There is nothing to gain from these lies. I win no awards, yet I bow. On that stage I tell my life story with the lightest of words, the heaviest of hearts. I bleed for the people who stay and watch. Behold: the comedy, the tragedy. They smile and cheer. They clap for this. And I bow, and I bow, and I bow.

That night, when the creature sleeps, when he sleeps, the mother escapes into her daughters_ room. She tells her daughter that the creature__ afraid of her having too much love, too much heart. She takes a tube of lipstick and drags it across her finger like a knife, marking it across her daughter__ cheeks, red, blood, war paint.

Sometimes I struggle. Sometimes I falter. Sometimes I live in gray. But always I remember the yarrow you__e grown in the spaces of my rib cage. I now love with roses from my heart, with lilacs from my mouth.