My Throat an Open Grave

by Tori Bovalino

For the girls who can never quite be good enough.

When I think of purity, I think of the bathtub; of cramming myself all the way in, all the way to the bottom, of squinching my eyes shut and opening my mouth and letting the water run in to clean me from the inside out. I think of screaming—but even more often, I think of inhaling. Letting go.

It’s so easy to trust a beautiful thing, to let yourself go deeper and deeper until you take a breath and realize the oxygen has been all sucked out and you’re suffocating.

I don’t know how to not ruin good things. I don’t know how to keep them—how to make myself worth the having.

In truth, I spend a lot of time inside my own head—so much that I think I’m distracted, so overwhelmed with my own little world that I forget there are other things going on outside of it.

There is not a single memory you could show me, accidentally or otherwise, that would make me think less of you.

Why has the thought of death been such a refuge to me? Because it’s better, easier, than understanding all the ways I’ve fucked up, all the ways it’s entirely my fault. Because I’m the charred remains of a girl who went too far, who burned too brightly until she was consumed.

He is a knight against the worst thoughts I’ve ever had of myself all stacked together.

“Until the end of time. To the end of the earth. I will carry you as far as I go, across this world and back.”