She's Too Pretty to Burn

by Wendy Heard

Art, like nature, has her monsters. —Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

The desert sky is hot and bright. Birds flit back and forth, oblivious to the smell of my blood as it soaks the dirt and rocks.

He’s watching me die.

And I did. I lifted the camera, and I took her picture. That was it. That was the beginning.

The photo already had its hooks in me.

“I think hating parties is a sign of a healthy aversion to people,” Nico muses, eyes on the road again.

I’m anonymous and free, existing only in the world of sensation and in the invisible internet sphere in her pocket.

“It’s a scientific fact that there are sharks,”

It never occurred to me that fear could be fun.

You’re taking things from me, too; we’re all taking things from each other, but then words were lost and so was I.

feel a matching violence simmering inside me, like I’m about to snap and burn the whole sad and stinking world to the ground.

“Why are you apologizing when you didn’t do anything wrong? That’s something we teach girls to do—always apologize, never be a burden. You have a right to take up space.”

I placed my hand on the back of her tangled, sea-wet head. She was so many layers. One layer was sweet and shy. The next layer was dark and unpredictable. Under that, a layer of kindness and softness, and under that, a layer of fierce dominance. She was the ocean, with its riptides and its soft, clean breeze and its beauty and its chilling, shark-filled depths.

I want to be self-assured and beautiful and stable, with a solid foundation to stand on and a raging artistic talent to carry me into a bright and interesting future.

“You took a dead girl’s purse?” My voice rose an octave. “Are you insane? Do you have any idea what that will look like to the cops?”

This is the most dangerous thing I’ve ever done. These could be the last moments of my life.

The police were investigating this blind; their facts were all wrong, and I was the only one who could help them.

I’ve been keeping quiet, but it’s a frenzied quiet. Art is like that: months of planning, all for one glorious moment of creation.

Is chaos something you can install?

“I don’t know how you practice so much. Don’t you get tired of soaking yourself in bleach and urine? Humans are land animals. Land animals, Mick.”

If you go after a man, you create a martyr. If you want people to see the failings of a system, you have to attack the machine.

I’m so glad I didn’t melt you down with steel and turn you into a lifeless, shining doll. What a waste that would have been. You’re too pretty to burn.