Allegedly

by Tiffany D. Jackson

Hard to celebrate the day you were born when everybody seems to wish you were never born at all. Especially after you come into this world and fuck it all up.

Because in a few hours, the most dangerous, most diabolical, most conniving woman in the world is visiting me: My mother.

My favorite show is Law & Order: Special Victims Unit but no one else in the house likes it.

Detective Olivia Benson, the lady cop, seems so, I don’t know, smart and mad nice. She can always tell when someone is lying. Always making friends with the victims and doesn’t stop until she gets the real bad guy.

Maybe if she had been able to see herself in me, she would have loved me a little more.

“What yuh may or may not’ve done is not di definition of who yuh really are.”

I look around the room. A group of girls, a rainbow of colors, all in for different crimes, but somehow we all look the same. We have something in common: we’re all too broken to be fixed.

That’s what happens when you’re a good liar.