Prologue
Does my brokenness offend you?
Are my words too sharp? My shadows too deep? My pain too raw?
Are you haunted by my damage the same way I’m haunted by the memory of a man whose taste I can no longer conjure on my lips, whose handprints have long since faded from my skin? Does my misery make you uncomfortable, like a paper-cut on a knuckle that re-opens each time you flex your finger?
I’d apologize, but I really don’t give a shit.
For a month, I have been trying. Trying to breathe. Trying to make it through the day without my chest aching with pain that will not end, without my eyes stinging with tears I refuse to let fall.
For four unrepentant weeks, I have attempted to piece myself slowly back together.
But there is no fixing me. Not really.
Putting my broken fragments back into place is like trying to reattach petals to a flower after you’ve ripped them off one-by-one and crushed them into pulp between your fingertips. A childhood game of chance gone horribly awry.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
He loves me.
He loves me not.
There is no returning to the girl I used to be. She is gone. Ended. Obliterated. She has faded out like a ghost. She has ceased to exist and become something entirely unrecognizable.
Becausesheis now awe.
I have never been more alone in my life than this past month. And yet, I amneveralone. Not anymore. Much as I might like to deny it, I am altered on a molecular level. There is a tiny, unseen heartbeat pumping in tandem with mine, somewhere far below the surface of my skin where no one else can see. I cannot hear it, cannot feel it, but I know it’s there. And no matter how often I press useless hands against my stomach, wishing to wake from a nightmare of my own making, I cannot change my reality. I cannot ignore the flutter of life growing ever stronger inside me. A war drum, thud-thud-thudding like a steadily-approaching line of enemy fighters on the battlefield.
Katharine Firestone: hot freaking mess.
…and… unfathomably, unpredictably… a mother?
Fear clenches me in a stranglehold at the mere thought.
I am unprepared.
I am unequipped.
A wreck of a girl, raised by a wretch of a woman. Reared with cold calculation in lieu of love.
How could I possibly carry a child? How could someone like me foster a human being into anything resembling normalcy or well-adjusted adolescence?
I will fail at this, just as I have failed at every other turn in my life.
I will break this child, just like I brokehim.
After all, it’s the only thing I know how to do with any kind of precision.
Smash. Wreck. Destroy.
Maple syrup leaking across a marble floor.
Ice in eyes made for heat and humor.
I am fire.