Waif

by Samantha Kolesnik

The truth was, I was a horrible daughter

my mind hated my body and wished it could be free of it

What gave these men the authority to grant who could change what?

I looked at her and wondered what she had and who she was that I could never be.

The world of men required certain sacrifices of me

“I don’t think you have to worry about being remembered.”

What made a man? Hatred for women, perhaps.

“Most monsters are just people the heroes abused.

I was my mother’s daughter, a weak-willed wretch. And at the thought of my similarity to her, I felt a rush of anger. But Mom was already dead. The only parts left of her were in me. So, I realized with grim acceptance, I found novel ways to harm myself and to hurt the parts of me that were her and the parts of me that were not her.

I didn’t just hate men. I didn’t just hate the world. I hated myself.

I’d always liked many parts of my body but never the whole.

My fantasies had simultaneously made my lifelong existence both tolerable and miserable.

I wanted to consume everyone and everything like the leftover shrimp alfredo—ravenously and with abandon—and then I wanted to purge it all up, spew it back to whence it came, with no excuses and no remorse.

Wow.

I was so good at running away, at disappearing, at becoming someone new. Sometimes, I thought it was my only talent.

I wondered at how any deity could create something so stunning and plop it here where all men would do was try to ruin it.

Right