Violet

REMEMBERANCE.

When I was seven years old, I had the semblance and the mind of thirty. I remembered everything about everyone, and I still do.

The day it happened, I was only five. Like the snap of a finger and the quickness of sleep, the couple whom I was to call home quickly became those who resented me, abandoned me.

All because suddenly, I was not what they expected. The day I turned five, I was described as interesting, peculiar, strange.

Of course, they were right.

But I was told to conceal above all else, "tell no one what is wrong with you."

But one day, they couldn't handle it anymore.

But one day, they didn't love me anymore. They sent me away like I was nothing but a parchment of mail, a stolen letter, a bad gift.

You know, something I've observed from humanity is that when we feel alone, ashamed, evil, we push our voices and our pain onto other people, make it their fault. Even when the cause of our hurt is deep within us, buried within our desires in an ever growing pile of jewels and bitter trash.

I was the bitter trash among my mother's jewels.

And it was frustratingly long before someone saved me from that horrid place, and called me a jewel. So when it happened, I didn't know how to react. I denied it, I refused to believe it. As if accepting the very idea that I was even worth something more than an object to be used by greedy men was appalling, as if it would break me.

So the next time I bought a pack of cigarettes, I remembered my mom. I remembered how she stole from me and drew my breath and in the same look she pushed me away, making sure I never knew love.

A pathetic thing, truly. My mother.

My father however, was even more so. My mother's lapdog. Nothing but.

But I don't like to talk about him. It seems cruel, to scorn a helpless dog when it only is functioned to do two things: adapt, and survive. How could I scorn him?

Now, I find myself in the same place. To scorn him would be hypocritical of me.

I always regretted not going to school. More than the other kids did. For them, it was a dream far away, something unachievable. So they didn't think about it, didn't let it linger in their mind. They just used what they did learn, not giving a single second thought to the fact there may have been more.

School wasn't for rats like us.

So I became a bird instead. Those who blamed me for breaking the chains could never reach me now, as I soared above them all for the wrong reasons and for the right people.

Vander would always tell me to ignore them, that my place wasn't here, it was wherever I wanted to be. That I didn't owe anything to him, or to the rest of my city.

Still the guilt stayed in me, and I furiously pushed it down until it burst and spilled onto everyone around me.

Sometimes I feel as if I have lived too many lives. After I die, wherever I go, I want to stay there. With the darkness of my thoughts and my heart that is heavy.

That's how I used to think. How I would beg for death, to take me off the streets of this horrid city, to release me from the slums and the touching hands and the grimy feel of them on me while I slept, where they weren't supposed to be, god. It was like I was in that horrible place all over again, the one mama and papa sent me to when they couldn't handle me anymore, the one where I stayed for years and wished for death every night in my bed and every time his touching hands and the grimy feel of them while I slept, where they weren't supposed to be, god.

I was always on the good side of bad karma. She loved me. Made love to me while I slept, stayed in the back of my head and in the sweat of my palms. In the crook between my ear and my neck, between the folds of my eyes. Behind them, piercing my retinas. Making me remember.

Remembrance was an odd thing. Something I wished wouldn't happen as often as it did.

And then Vi entered my life, and I wanted to remember everything about her.