That's What Makes You Beautiful

• Caroline Li, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2012

I blame you for the blood gushing down the gutters. I blame you for the misted eyes hiding behind the rails. I blame you for the deaths that linger on the world’s virtue. I blame you for daggers that you pierced in my heart, unrelenting. I blame you for the gaunt faces, the severed limbs, the crazed, unfocused eyes probing the slums, the haughty sneers. I blame you, for the world’s crimes. I loathe you, yet, how can I still…love you?
With the Lucifer pressed down under her thumb, you tyrant! Playing us as smoothly as violins, pulling at our strings, letting our blood mingle with the ominous rain. You! Lying there like silk, with your pure arrogance masking your face, do you not know what you have done? Our lives are worthless now; you have reduced us to nothing! Do you have no pity? I long to see the day you smile, without that snickering purse of lips.
You squeeze the life out of us, until we are only rotting suits of skin left behind to deteriorate. Our tears are water to you, you drink them up like blood, our hands are working for you, they are raw and with peeling branded flesh, our hearts are toys for you, your love change like the seasons do. There must be something more! All those masks you wore, they litter the ground like scattered beans. WE are your puppets, our glassy, shadowed eyes gawk dully ahead, our limbs lost will, our hair, matted and slicked down our scalp with dried blood from your hands, our mouth cut open wide in a perpetual, morbid grin. Your travesty, your vulgar and sordid peelings, marks your malicious eyes, thinned down to a slither of beady black.
My heart is scraped raw; my knees lacerated and of carmine hue. I am used to the copper relish that is the upholstery to my mouth, my insipid, mundane eyes, and my innocuous spirit has faded.
What would the world be like without your slaughter, without your calamity? You parasite! You unfilial disaster, you unwanted pest! When did you ever utter the words of tender resentment? Your vehemence is undying, your malice is uncanny. Oh! How I wish we were the slaves of the Lucifer instead of being oppressed under their tyranny and dictation. Do you remember that day? ‘This is all for your own good, my love…’ Do you remember those words that you etched into my heart, raw and bloody? What barbaric, forsaken words they were, your truculent hands seemed to dig into my lungs, deteriorating my organs, your inhumane guffaw rings in my ears, pounding my blood, coursing through those ropey veins. I loathe you! I detest you! I despise your whole existence! But with that agony, that affliction, there is unconditional love. How could I love such a monstrosity that leaves me aghast in its wake? Yes, I love you, your hostility, your devilish, lurid traits; I love you because…that’s what makes you beautiful…