Photo by Steinar Engeland on Unsplash
I wanted to be mythological, ethereal. You said I already was but I was also still
something guys wanted to hold. Not that they were scared of. I told you they were
scared of lots of things, girls with brains, girls on fire. You said they were very
afraid of fat. I didn’t know what to say to that. You told me you were bi and I felt
wings in my throat. I didn’t say it back in the same way but I said I thought I could
love anyone. I was trying to tell you. You said you wanted to be pretty, not pretty
for a fat girl. You said you wanted one time for someone to tell you you had a
beautiful anything other than face. For the record, you were. And you did. You
asked me to teach you how to get men & I realized I didn’t know how, & maybe
didn’t even want to, that they were taught to chase me & I was never taught the
word no. You tried—to be friend, to be funny, to be what they wanted & then you
tried to disappear. Every time I tried & found you. Tried & true. I was sore & what
I wanted was to be less seen, but the more I cried, the more I gleamed, like ice in
a sun beam. (Sadly, guys like sad bitches, if only for a hot minute.) But when you
looked at me it hurt in a way I wanted. I said it was a bitch to be a girl & we
decided to be witches, to be ghosts, a kind of haunting. We decided to be
lunar—dusting our bodies in moon dust till we shined like fiberglass, untouchable,
inviolable, frighteningly gorgeous.
Camille Ferguson lives in and loves Cleveland, Ohio, with its thriving literary scene and hub of creatives. Camille studies creative writing at Cleveland State University where she recently received the Neal Chandler Creative Writing Enhancement Award. Her work is featured in Ligeia Magazine and is forthcoming in Jelly Bucket.