The girl in the light blue sweater shuffles her feet and twists her fingers around in a way that makes me look up at her face and notice the slight downward tilt of her smile and droop in her eyes. She doesn’t want to be here and the sweater is too tight for her liking. I can tell because she pulls at the sleeves in a nervous way that I sometimes do to my skin. 

Eyes. There’s nobody here, and yet I feel the eyes of the world, rubbing against me like thick honey I can’t wash off. Such an odd sensation, feeling as though me and my tied up ginger hair and bandaged arms, me and my miss-matched socks and flower dress, me and my confusion are out on display.

And so, like every other night, I will go out onto my balcony at dusk and play pretend. I will smile, because people don’t like when the sun is angry, and I will let this kingdom be deceived by a facade for a little longer. I will be their illusion, the royal family’s lie. And I will do it again. Over and over again. 

A sixteen-year-old me had run into the garden just as wild as her surroundings, with messy tears running down her cheeks and found the best thing in her life.

The blood is everywhere, reeking of death. It trails to that door one drop, one drag at time.

All of us soldiers are the same, unique traits and personalities rendered irrelevant in the face of war. Every step, every turn, was freakishly accurate. Because that’s what we were trained to do. 

A sunrise greeted me, one too beautiful to be wasted on this day. Every corner, every inch, sobbing was present, not the ones found in a tower with a pretty princess, but the type that violently clawed and thrashed, voices cracking in agony.

The sun breaks free, its rays casting light upon us, as if in a fairytale. The luminance glistens off the meadow as the wistful sky lures me in. I see a red string above us, a red string of hope.

The water engulfed me whole. Its arms wrapped around my limbs. They yanked and tore at my desperate attempt to live until I stopped thrashing. Until I gave up.

The sky is not quite blue today. No, today it is frosted gray: hints of a pale, pale blue slipping through the glassy, cold sky. It makes me want to fly, fall back into the clouds and never-ending gray. Instead, I am here, sitting at the old coffee shop, my fingers numb and my face frozen. 

TOP CREATIVE WORK OF THE MONTH: The broken little girl who no longer had an innocent, pure heart would stay collapsed right next to her friend. But the snow saw everything and took up her offering.

TOP CREATIVE WORK OF THE MONTH AWARD: The voices start again. The cries of every sacrifice I had to make to get here. They whimper and scream, “We’re going to get you someday. Just you wait.”