Drain

Dirt and glitter
Cover the floor
We're pretty and sick
We're young and we're bored (Ha)

It's time to lose your mind
And let the crazy out

Speakers mounted on the corners of the clubhouse spit Ke$ha across the mass of wet bodies cavorting in the blue tinged water of the pool. Pops and crackles periodically sing melody as the speakers strain to keep up with the volume being pushed through them. It is atmosphere, loud but barely noticed, among the squeals of children, splashes of water and voices. All the voices, talking to one another or no one in particular.

"I can not have a big ass. If I gain weight, I can not fly," she howls, from the wood bench where she sits, her body quivering, barely restrained in a purple and white bikini.

Chemical blonde with hints of auburn at the roots, she is maybe fifteen and at the end of her life. Red tinged eyes peek through her fingers, palms filling with anguish that leaks down her cheeks. Dark starscapes, her painted nails, burrow into her cheeks, on the verge of destroying the glow of her youthful beauty. Her eyes follow a boy, tan and brash in the center of the pool.

With each smile he gives away to those that gather around him, she shudders, wracked by the tremors of her world splitting, turning on herself. It is her fault. She is ugly, unworthy. She hates herself, it sits like a specter on her bare shoulders to be read by anyone willing, yet finding an illiterate or ambivalent audience, lost in their own merriment. She howls, a black hole sucking air and life into the darkness that is becoming her soul, in defiance to the sun painting everyone pink.

What hawker sold her the poisoned apple that passed her lips on its way to her heart, that now gnaws the truth of who she is? That blames her for the immature frolicking of the boy who once promised love for a pound of her flesh? Was it her dad? Was it the movies, the television, the music? Who can be blamed and strung up, drawn an quartered in the city center? It makes it go down easier when we have someone to blame, to solidly point the finger of responsibility. Was is God?

Fifty feet of grass and concrete sidewalk separate us, but I feel each flick of the knife as she cuts herself into small chunks, mentally cellophaning her pain for the shelf, re-marking the package sticker, discounting the price put on her life. She fakes a smile, which I return, as I walk by. Towel in hand, I head for the showers, where I will stand until the water runs clean through the teeth of the drain.