The first time I thought about killing you was 2 or 3 days ago.

It's all so stereotypical. I was mad because you didn't like my outfit. And even worse cause I knew you thought it made me look fat, and it
did because I am fat, but that's not really why I was mad.

I wanted you to read a story but you wouldn't, and that story was mine. A children's tale, me in church days playing with the boys, picking
poisonous berries and scooping them up in my upturned skirt.

I remember my father quite well. Watching me pretend my toy duck was a spaceship, because we couldn't afford a spaceship. And
drawing all my Es like Gs because I could not understand the concept of a half-circle, only a whole one.

Once I planted a tree in the living room, brown dirt meshing with brown carpet.

“That's how little girls lose eyeballs,� he'd say to me.

I believed him wholeheartedly, and when the bell would ring for supper, I'd already be there, fork in left hand and knife clenched extra
tight.

Then afterward mother would feed me a blueberry icecream that tasted like pineapple. It might have been the pills in it that she crushed
up for my illness. I'd have to finish it all, even if I wasn't hungry.

Once we went fishing with our hands, and I freed all the worms. When she struck me it only hurt, and didn't feel like anything else.

Sometimes she hit father too, and swung the kitchen knife at him. One of those times I came in and she said it was a game. I pulled one
of the larger knives out from its wooden sheath and waved the cooking utensil like a sword.

“I will save you!� I yelled to no one in particular.

And then all my mother said was “You're a GIRL! Now act like one.�

After that I went outside and told my little brother to stare at the sun.

My little brother is blind. But he can still tell I'm fat, when we hug at family reunions.

.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................
...I'm sorry, I just forgot who I was.

Who I'd been, growing from a thought up into solid flesh, a 3D shadow. Not a fireman, policeman, postman, or the other three jobs they
tell you that there are.

I've probably never had a new idea in my life.

So when I swing the weapon in your general direction, don't think me original. My arsenal is on loan. Somewhere someone presses a
button, and I act. You really can't expect much better from me. Those of you who have what you have, there should be no pride or guilt.
You are, and always will be, a distorted mirror.

Look at me, your knife in my hand, my fat hand...steering the path for crowds of unborn children. I can see us from an aerial view,
spinning. Just the way we used to be, naked. There is only one way to describe how I felt when you made that face, blood-wet and
snarling like a zombie extra wandering onto the wrong movie set. I just couldn't stop laughing.

And I was like an alarm clock that went off right when you expected, screeching love ballads through static when you least need to hear
them.

In the old yard, playing after dark, one night I didn't hear the bell. Slipping through the doggy door, my eyes met with the kitchen tile.
I felt not at all surprised to find my father there, slumped in a pool of blood that I thought was jelly. He wore blue, my mother's
favorite color. It was not the metaphorical death we had always envisioned, and yet looking back to that era of childhood, it seems
nothing could ever be just what it was.

Thick As Blood by Colette Phair