Larissa Smith > Recent Status Updates

I always thought it was something a man did for a woman when they married: build her
something to live in.

Her eyelids droop, and suddenly she looks tired. Her breasts are all swollen, and the puppies pull at them. She is a weary goddess.
She is a mother so many times over.

I lay for so long that when I raise my head from my arm, my hair has marked cursive I can't read into my skin.

It was easier to keep quiet and take it than to give him an answer.

I knelt and stared for glass, wondered if I could find the piece that had cut me.

You got to push... until it stops hurting.

"Move, Junior!" I said. My hands, which moments before had been pink, were red. Especially the left. "I'm bleeding!" I said under my breath. I didn't yell; I wanted Manny to see me, but not as a weak, sorry girl. Not something to be pitied because I couldn't take pain like a boy.

after a while the Pit felt strange when they weren't there, as empty as the fish tank, dry of water and fish, but filled with rocks and fake coral like I saw in Big Henry's living room once.

The daddy was that color: he was short and looked like a big red muscle. He had chunks of skin and flesh crusted over to scabby sores from fight-ing. When he and China had sex, there was blood on their jaws, on her coat, and instead of loving, it looked like they were fighting.

"She don't need no help pushing."
And China doesn't. Her sides ripple. She snarls, her mouth a black line. Her eyes are red; the mucus runs pink. Everything about China tenses and there are a million marbles under her skin, and then she seems to be turning herself inside out. At her opening, I see a purplish red bulb. China is blooming.

Skeetah ignores Junior because he is focused on China like a man focuses on a woman when he feels that she is his, which China is.

Id rather skate alone and risk failing than succeed with you. Winning is absolutely worthless when it comes at the cost of having to hate myself when I'm with you."

And when the applause starts, that's when Aaron takes her face in his hands and kisses her.

WHATTTT

Feel nauseous.

Take deep breaths. If you're going to be sick, make sure you direct it toward Aaron.

…she's going to war for herself.

Right now, with the defeated slack of his shoulders and the blank expression on his face, I realize, for all his faults, no one can loathe him more than he loathes himself.

"She was the best. I'm nothing like him, Stas. I swear I’ll be so good to you. You'll never have to worry."

The seriousness in his face pulls at my heart, and the idea that Nathan could ever be put in the same league as his dad is absurd.

"Protective, isn't he?" The nurse chuckled.
"Very" I nodded in agreement.
"It's because he cares, though, so
I don't mind"
"Ah, young love".

JJ scoffs loudly. "I don't believe that. Everyone wants me"
Henry frowns as Stassie heads toward the stairs, muttering under his breath. "I don't want you, JJ."

"I don't wanna share you with some other guys. You know I can keep you perfectly satisfied all on my own, in every way you need.

Her thinking I wouldn't spend every moment learning her body better than my own is also laughable.

Communication is king