𝕮hapter two.

Girlhood ━━ A smile just sweeter than she is, like molten nectar dripping through fingers. It burns! But it's saccharine and it's addictive, and sooner or later it will feel like milk. Not milk that comes from a loving mothers teat, but the kind that is left in the summer hot car with the rest of the forgotten shopping. Curdled. Foul. Bitter. A true summer scorcher. It's of foolishness and fun, the two f's she has learnt to dread. Because that summer, fear came in the form of aphrodite's shimmering blow-up pool. A mermaid dive wedged her head between the railing and the soft suffocating bumper and left her there, face underwater, tan limbs flailing, splashing, panicking like a fish out of water━ begging for help and falling onto deaf, absent-minded ears. Her saviour is an earthbound angel with a malicious agenda to never allow her to forget. The memory burnt like bile at the back of her throat, a vow to never be submerged again. / But let's move on to who / could raise a girl who let others spit dishonesty down her throat just to dull the burn; a woman hardly older than the girl━ a woman who's mind is preoccupied by skin on skin and softcore porn like squished cherries / could love a girl like her. 

Boyhood ━━ A boy withering / thriving under a wild sky. Sweating deceitful honey that pools like rainwater in the hollows of his collar bones, he swats away greedy girls like flies. His eyes flash like lightning and it's terrifying! He's fidgety but his mind is worse, unfurling and twisting like the waves he would surf- ruin and disorder and trouble buzz like a swam of insects in his ears and it's fucking maddening because it is all that comes out of his parted lips when he's praying for relief. Stuck in turmoil that tastes of charcoal and blood and salt / where is his savior? / only someone with bad tastebuds could adore a boy like him. A boy born of vehement anger and deep sea green jealousy and cutthroat hands. A boy grown to be cunning and lost and wanting, wanting, wanting━ her, only her.

━━ 𝕸.