Deadra Acosta

July 17 20XX

Bronson’s Saturn

MY PLACE TO FLOAT

“It’s not even that I just didn’t like my dad,” I say. “To be honest, I couldn’t fucking stand that motherfucker.

“I’ve never felt more disgusted with, about anything in my life. And, and I, I’ll disgust myself just being his daughter. I mean, yeah, you gotta understand how it feels to know that that made me. That will always be my origin point. Like, there’s no fucking turning it back.

“I’ve,” and before I know it, I’m saying it, I can’t stop myself, “I’ve hurt myself, a lot, about it. And I’ve done other things, too, just, fucking…” The words fall apart and I’m crying again, and he’s just listening for me, saying nothing. And it feels soft, the atmosphere. My face is a slop, tears, sweat, all red. And I can disintegrate, and really let myself die for the first time. Because right now it’s not about blood or pain, but just letting myself go. I can die now.

“I think one of the things, that made me the most sick, Bronson, is when I went to by that fucking card. It was just by impulse, just by the fucking notion. And you saw me there?

“I mean, I fucking hated myself so much, I don’t wanna talk about what I did.” But I did. I wanted more than anything to talk about what I did, the way the shower boiled my skin flimsy, the blindfold sagged into slag on my face, my hidden abortion in wonderland, floating into the atmosphere, a pink, Mexican candy baby. On my knees, the slice was deeper than I said, than the truth I told.

“Tell me anything,” Bronson says.

And then he said nothing, again. So I said, “When I was a kid, he always called me…” and I breathe through the words, to make them safe, to make them not his, “a fat bitch, a slut, a fucking cunt, a whore.” I breathe: “And we spent nights sleeping in the same room, almost every night—even when I never wanted to.”