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before your unbecoming, you think yourself whole. when you are waking up and counting the days on curled fingers, thinking 'soon it will come. soon they'll see.' days and days and days, eyes wide open, yearning for all the heart the world could give you. allowing yourself to fall head over heels, locked away in closets, the weight of prying eyes, snickers on the corner of your vision, drowning in music, tongues, telling yourself you can create a language of your own and write this history between theirs, so that when the time comes, when that day comes, you can point and laugh and say, [break][break][break]

born in the lions den, you know starvation. ears deafen from countless nights of teeth-curling snarls, bellows of rage that send you scrabbling back against the wall, heart in your throat, a wild light in your eyes. empty threats and empty promises--you lose the ability to tell the difference between them.
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a hunger lives in your belly, an all-consuming thirst for blood that you know, you know you'll never slake. your body, you tell yourself, is nothing more than a vessel--you chant this, sing this, cry this in front of the mirror, pressing bruises, wrapping slender fingers around ribs. you learn to count by the calories you consume, teach yourself about biology and metamorphosis by the measurements you make with clasped fingers, the ever-sliding number on the back of your dresses. [break][break]

they say they love you, so please, eli. please stop this. look at what you're doing to yourself.[break][break]

love is a synonym for pain. they speak of warmth, hearthfires, of a safety net, and you see with True Sight the burn scars, smoldering wreckage, ripcord whiplash. you throw yourself to their whims (with the sole purpose to put on a show, their show), and you splash about in it, in life, endure all you can so you can build yourself back up from the breaking point, one stone at a time. you weaponize yourself with scathing remarks, an air of cool carelessness, play the fool because that is what they want.[break][break]

and after you have gone through your chrysalis, when you emerge with glass wings and a heart as cold as ice, you pose for the world to see. you look at them with half-lidded eyes, the way they wish their lovers would. you tell them stories of the lions' den (but of course, you think to yourself--that happened to someone else). you spin fantasies with your body, wrap yourself in designer clothes, brand your name so that it is yours. so that you are untouchable. and you climb so, so high.[break][break]

and you're still climbing, and you're still reaching, and you think that you may never come down. that you will never come down.[break][break]