she broke your throat, she cut your hair.

my lip is broken, red and swollen to a pout. i have work to do, but i have plans for escape: there are essays on kant and commonplace books, but dreams of piracy on the very smallest scale. (i am a fishmonger, and fishmongers need never want for work. i could run away to south america, somewhere beautiful and dangerous. i could buy a boat and learn to fish well, and take fat american tourists into the middle of the ocean where i'll fillet whatever they manage to catch for tips. i'll wash my bloody hands in the salt. i'll save entrails for bait. and i'll live close enough to the tourist town for there to be white people i can exploit, and a queer bar at which i can hunt, and close enough to the real world that i can learn a language and shop in real markets and live for next to nothing and only work when i wish and drink in the afternoons in the places where the people drink. my skin will get brown and my arms will get strong again and i will be covered in scales and not mind and my hands will smell like mermaids and i will not mind and i will wear naught but shorts and sports bras for months at a time. i do not usually catch myself wishing for somewhere warm. it snowed for the first time the night before last.) i've been getting thin. i drink chamomile in the morning and at night to help the nausea to shrink away, but i never want to eat. i weigh a bit less now than i did when my father was dying and small. i do not like the way that it looks on my face. but at least i've not needed to spend much on food. it's almost a bit of whiskey in the jar, at least.