Don’t Call Me Pretty

Don’t call me pretty.

Because pretty sounds soft like the hues of a midsummer sunset, when inside I still smell the burn of a raging wildfire. Pretty sounds like you’re talking about a girl and not a woman who heaves, who instigates, who jabs back. Pretty, the word used for girls who wouldn’t amount to much else, a reminder to not chop their hair or ink their skin, for then, they would not, be pretty. The word rolls off the tongues of hounds in streets after midnight, searching for pretty little scraps, calling it out in hopes that one frail word can be exchanged for one whole night. Pretty is unworthy of being looked upon for anything else, other than the curves of bone and tender silence, like a fucking vase on a shelf in your mother’s house. 

And for every hour I’ve spent decorating my face, I’ve spent twelve on decorating the backside of my mind, mostly through pictures and prose and torment and I suppose it’s all just a very pretty waste.