Member-only story
This is What Eats the Heart
How I learned love isn’t a body stripped and sold for parts.
The year I developed breasts and started to bleed my world became extremely loud. I was ten and twelve; not quite a woman but biology would have it differently. This was the time when boys started to notice me, and they had an urgent need to tell me about my body and what they could do to it. Clutching my books to my chest, I walked passed men who whispered their wants — it wasn’t even eight in the morning and already I had to navigate the goings-on underneath a man’s trousers. Most days I wanted to stretch a wall over my skin.
Back then, I lived in Brooklyn and wore complicated sweaters.
But first, this.
I sent up flares to announce my happiness. A rebellion from a time when I was barefaced, lonely, and wearing soft pants. That was the winter where there was no snow only sun, and I walked down Sunset with two black umbrellas shielding my eyes.
What are you doing? Everyone asked, always. I’m hiding. Until when? Until conditions improve. But I’ll take victories where I can. The days arrived bleached. Wrecked and ruined.
Once, a lover said: Felicia, you’re killing me. Murder in the first. Well, then. I mustn’t be very good. You’re still breathing.
