The silence at the dinner table seeped into her guilty conscious, making her hand shiver as she drank a glass of water. She knew her mother was hiding a black eye under her hastily put make up. She knew her father was the one that put it there. She knew her brother blamed her. She knew everyone at the table blamed her.

"Let's eat," her mother said, her words a hammer trying to nail in a semblance of normality she's forced herself to believe. But her mother doesn't have the nail. She does. She doesn't know what to do with it though,
so she nailed it into her eyes instead.

Dinner continued in silence and her shame was all she could swallow, too sick to swallow anything else. Sick. That's what she has become.

"Aren't you going to eat anything?" her father asked and his voice sounded more like a slap to the face than concern. His eyes narrowed and her eyes widened. Her hands shook harder as she pushed a mouth of food into her mouth. Her mother's face filled up with hope and her big brother stared at her with trepidation.

What has she done?

She continued to eat her food, already knowing it isn't going to stay where it has to. She ate too much. She couldn't afford more.

Maybe she wasn't sick. Maybe she's just a dagger waiting to be used. Maybe all this time she though she was stabbing herself, but has been stabbing everyone else around her instead.

Maybe she's tired of being a dagger. Maybe she wants to be beautiful.

But she doesn't want to know what's beauty anymore. So, when dinner's over, she walked back to her room, entered the bathroom and pressed a finger down her throat.

She doesn't know what beauty is, but, she thinks, maybe she's searched so long for it that she's become ugly.

She closes her eyes and an image of her family came into mind. She took the nail away and they broke apart because of it. She broke them so forcefully that they now want to break each other. She wasn't a dagger, she was a loaded gun. And, after shooting herself, they used her to shoot each other. She's a weapon. But she designed herself to be one.

When she walked out of the bathroom, she crumbled to the floor. Everything she did, she only did it to be loved. But all she got was everything she has been trying to throw away.

She loves her family so much that she destroyed them while trying to hide that she was destroying herself.

They were so beautiful, though. The more she hurts them the more they tried. And they get hurt because of her and she hurts with them and she was the villain in the story they had made. But she didn't want to be.

I love them I love them I love them

Sounds ripped out of her that she had tried to keep silent. Tears weren't out of the  ordinary anymore.

The lights were off but the door was open and suddenly her mother was sat next to her in the floor, holding her together as she fell apart.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she said, over and over and over again but her mother didn't say anything, just strokes her hair as she hugged the mother she broke.

When it was all over and her eyes were red and dry, her mother pulled her back and stroked her cheekbones, just below her eye where her tears would've been. She looked her mother in the eye for the first time in a while and sees a few tears there too. Her mother's eyes were shining. She's a dagger. A gun. A gust of wind that puts out a delicate fire.

"I just want you to be happy," her mother's cracked voice said, broken and defeated and hopeful and full of love and that's all it took to bring back the tears she thought had left. She wonders sometimes if they'll ever leave

i love you
even when i can't do anything else
i'm sorry i became
the disaster in your life
i just wanted to be enough
instead i became nothing
please don't see me
the same way
i see myself
(i love you)