No Roads Diverge

I was somewhere between the devil's hand and the angel's call,

unsettled in my rippling skin and waiting to tear into it to reveal the new parts underneath. I remember stepping up to the edge, putting my foot down on the half-floor and stepping off to fall into the descending hell of screams and waved hands.

And then I closed my eyes, closed my eyes to the dark that consumed me as I fell within it. I had accepted the animal within me, batting away at the seraphim's behest, telling her I was mindful, but I was two cents shy of expending that bit of myself too. Two cents shy.

Upon the reveal of my eyes to the light, my lashes overshadowed them and my pupils dilated like a wolf set on prey and I saw the blur of peach colored skin and some other auburn colored hair before wicked thoughts flew through me. Agitation building, rising, but I tamped it down to reduce the glory so as to not make my satisfaction feel underdone and I struck her. Not twice, but once.

I snorted to myself, laughing in short, and then watched the unbridled rage pop out of her before I saw her jump at me and I was ready to leap back and assault her face once more if she laid hands on me before our argument turned towards the center of itself. Another woman. The woman neither of us could come to agreement on and yet I scowled at her presence, knowing she'd be nothing of what I wanted or what I expected, but she'd take the insults all the same.

Had I been aware, I would have known that I wasn't cowed by this woman, no- I had felt remarkable pity for her that she took every insult hurled, demanded respect and did nothing to show for it and I took off out of reach. I remember there being some catch of two fists, more hands, and then the assault of my victory turning to ash on my tongue to prove not just one instance of hatred turned real to be, but a shocking two.

I never thought I could hate her. I told myself otherwise, demanded my mind make some sort of amend to the simple sentence that might have even slipped from my lips, but who was I but an emotionally destitute girl playing with the mentality of jail versus homelessness for freedom from such a despicable set of women. No amount of money in this god-forsaken family could twist me to bend over backwards to create some façade that I would ever think otherwise.