Sunburn: Exclusive American Edition with Additional Material

by Chloe Michelle Howarth

I can’t stand being on the outside of what everyone else is feeling.

Even at my small age, I understood that there were limits to love, and I felt sure that one day people would run out of love for me.

All I wanted was some company, to be one of the grown-up girls. I never thought I was being a pest until I was made aware I was one.

Perhaps it is her moods, the glows and shadows of them, as though her heart is made of the changing sky.

It’s humiliating to wonder if I have ever meant the same things to her as she does to me.

wish I had never noticed that we girls replace the women, that the boys seamlessly replace the men, and that we all follow a pattern.

Outwardly, we are all living the same life, but inwardly, I hope, everybody has as many private crises as I do.

Mother only wants the best for me. We are old and new versions of each other. I see pieces of her in me, and pieces of myself in her, and still it’s like we speak two different languages;

There are so many unhappy people, I just don’t want to find out that I am one of them.

I would drape my own soul over her body to protect her from eyes like

It is her, she breathed my soul into me.

All along I felt so far away from everybody else, but now I think I was just far away from myself.

If I could, I would be fearless. I would be friends with my failures and nurse them until they became victories. Perhaps when I am older, I will live that way and be an honest, proud version of myself

Stupidly, I had expected that this might fix the void inside me, but it turns out coffee tables don’t do that. It was just another way of getting through the weeks.