Black Iris

by Leah Raeder

I know what it feels like to plan something that will destroy you,

I am a creature with a vast capacity for patience, and for violence.

Girls love each other like animals. There is something ferocious and unself-conscious about it. We don’t guard ourselves like we do with boys. No one trains us to shield our hearts from each other. With girls, it’s total vulnerability from the beginning. Our skin is bare and soft. We love with claws and teeth and the blood is just proof of how much. It’s feral. And it’s relentless.

Hatred is a poison and you cannot carry it inside your skin without getting sick, too.

Only afterward do you glance down at the tangle of string around your feet that used to be a person who was whole and self-contained and realize that love is not a thing that we create. It’s an undoing.

In “Fever 103°” Plath talks about illness as divinity and right now I was sick and I was divine.

“What really bothers you? That she’s bipolar, or that she’s bisexual?” “If I knew which one made her a cheater, I could answer that.”

She was right about one thing. I was her daughter. In every hateful, destructive, murderous way.

“I need the highs and the lows. It’s who I am. I need them both, but they’re killing me. There’s no way for me to be at peace.”

“Love is mania, Laney. It’s ecstasy. It’s everything. And I may be a fucking cliché, but I know I love you.”

You didn’t want to feel better, you just wanted everyone else to feel worse.

Girls get under each other’s skin. We get too close, too attached, too crazy, and then we can’t let go. Our claws sink too deep. When we separate, we tear each other apart.