Camille DeAngelis

You ain’t never gonna feel nothin’ other people ain’t been through a million times before.

Mama didn’t love me anymore.

I was beautiful and brave, someone destined to love and to survive, to be happy and to remember. Real life held none of those things for me, but in the pleasant darkness of that shabby old theater I forgot it never would.

. If this were anyone’s story but mine, it would have been the first time I met my childhood sweetheart.
* * *

Oh, Mama. You won’t love me anymore once you hear what I’ve done.

I wanted to be a cicada. I wanted to pull my skin off and leave it in the bushes and nobody would recognize me, not even my own mother. I would be a completely different person and I wouldn’t remember a thing.

That night I learned there are two kinds of hunger. The first I can satisfy with cheeseburgers and chocolate milk, but there’s a second part of me, biding its time. It can go on like that for months, maybe even years, but sooner or later I’ll give in to it. It’s like there’s a great big hole inside me, and once it takes his shape he’s the only thing that can fill it.

I wanted to knit myself a sweater I could hide inside.

never knew something could be so grotesque and so beautiful at the same time.

ou ain’t never gonna feel nothin’ other people ain’t been through a million times before.”