Hardcore Souma

My name is never something that people ask when they meet me,
they just see me,
their eyes, glittery and gluttonous,
and that’s all they want to know.
I have known for a while that I am notorious among those that dare not speak my name,
they whisper it in the halls as I pass,
like it’s a curse,
some kind of spell that will send me back to hell,
if they chant it with enough ferocity and fear.

I am a pariah to some,
a secret desire to others,
but a little girl to the only one I ever trusted.
I am true to him, always,
like a puppy that stays young, loyal and grateful forever.
I waited by the window for him every night,
waking up, a wreck, as the sun rose every morning.
Shelves of trinkets I’d stolen and scammed stared at me as I dressed,
mocking me with the memory of every other morning that I’d woken up without a single word from him.

I rise from my grave everyday,
a damned daylily,
cursed to roam the Earth until life gets sick of this cruel joke it has been playing for years.
I have tried to leave so many times.
I get reckless, restless,
staying up, stumbling into strange places under the starlight,
drinks spill and secrets are spun into a sticky web.
I am caught,
but I am also the catcher,
rounding on myself with remorseless rage,
I tear the very hairs from my head,
my eyes flood and I cannibalise.

I was always going to end this way.
Torn apart in a tornado of lead,
laying in my own blood,
with my name chanted from the sidelines,
from the cult of those that choke when they try and speak to me with their full chest.
No one will save you. That’s just life,
but I always waited by windows and wished on aquamarine moons,
only to be burnt by the horror of hoping.

I hold on as long as I can,
hoping to hear my father’s voice one last time,
but there is just the morose melody of death.
I didn’t expect the pain.
It is searing and unstoppable,
inescapable,
and not like my usual torment,
where I can escape and forget,
falling into the fantasies and the less upsetting memories.
It just hurts and hurts and hurts,
burning under my skin,
with no motive or reasoning.
The sound of gunfire still rings in my ears,
and, God, I’m so alone.

I just didn’t want to be a loser any more.