I Fucking Hate (You)

It begins with a twitch. My reflection catches me off guard—too sharp, too real. Eyes bloodshot, and a smile stretched too tight as skin pulled thin over splintered bone.

I blink.
It doesn’t.

I stare.
It stares back.

A needle sliding beneath a fingernail. I feel it—the weight of survival.

Something writhes behind its eyes—a trudging thing chewing at the rims of my cheeks. I feel it now, slithering beneath my ribs: every lie I’ve stifled, every apology I never owed, every moment I shed my skin just to be touched without flinching.

I try to look away.
It doesn’t let me.

So I lunge. My fingers collide with the glass, but it doesn’t shatter. It yields—soft, wet, like pressing into an open wound.

It laughs—low, guttural, like a blade grating bone—its grin splitting too broad, too parallel. Teeth jagged as shattered porcelain, gums greased with blood.

I claw at the surface—no, at myself. I gash through the curated versions: the obedient smile, the silent submission, the manufactured riches. My nails yank through flesh, peeling back every borrowed piece, every rendition I perfected until I forget what is real.

Blood snakes down my wrists, pooling in the sink. Still, I gash until I’m nothing but nerve endings and nausea until all that remains is something raw, something ugly, something that still—still—wants to be loved.

She watches. Waiting.

Then she leans in, her voice twisting around my spine:

I know why you hate me.

Its grin splits wider, a wound that never heals.

I hate you, too.