There is something completely terrifying about a blank page.
It seems too white, too clean; it is an expectant blankness that gives me the urge to mark it up as soon as possible, but then when I do, I ruin it, and feel bad about that.
Is there something satisfying about ruining something that used to be perfect?
You tell me: when it has freshly snowed and you walk outside, can you stand to see the snow looking like that, all smooth and vibrant white?
No, no, you can’t. You want to run all over it, right? You want to see it yellow and purple and blue and red and ruined. Ruined.
Right?
Is that what you want, too, when you see something perfect? It is. I know it is.
Is that what he wanted when he saw me unmarked? Was I fresh snow to his feet?
I can’t stop thinking about how blank this paper in front of me is and it’s really freaking me out: I’m chewing on my pencil and twisting my hair and my legs are jittering under my desk and I’m extremely aware of my pores under the fluorescent lighting.
Fluorescent lighting, there’s something else that I can’t handle, why the fuck do they put this kind of lighting in schools when half of us are starving ourselves and drowning our skin in acne cream and makeup to begin with? Going into a bathroom with this lighting and seeing our pallid, grey, not good enough selves in the mirror is exactly the thing that’ll make us concentrate more on our schoolwork, sure.
I just realized that I’ve been staring at this test for the entire class and I haven’t even written down my name. The paper is like the lights, too white, it’s revealing way too much.
I notice the sounds of pencils scratching on paper feverently all around me and wonder what my teacher will think when she sees my blank test. I wonder if it’ll freak her out as much as it’s freaking me out right now.
I wonder if it’ll freak her out to mark it in red.

Always he likes me in white. He never likes me in red.
It’s not you, he says, just not you.
Again, this obsession with white.
He tells me I should always wear my white sets for him, that I look beautiful. Like an angel.
There is no difference between decades and minutes. 15, 36, these are only numbers.
Sometimes he makes me stand at the foot of the bed for a while,
he’s taking me in, he says. I pretend I’m a white bird on a high perch, some exotic species,
probably near extinction. I pretend he can’t touch me.
I pretend that he’s not taking my white things off; I think they’re too white,
too fucking white,
and he’s taking them off and then he asks me if I want to make him happy.
Do you want to make me happy?
I do, I always do.
Show me.
I do, I always do.

You don’t know what bullshit tastes like until you’ve been a fifteen year old girl
experiencing the Catholic school system.
You don’t know what a whore smells like until
you’ve walked the halls of my high school.
Whoever is in charge of the dress code for this system must be
some old perverted man wanting to see his fantasies played out
in a building where teenagers learn mathematics in a way that simultaneously teaches them Christian values.
One plus one equals pray to Jesus and hike up that plaid skirt, Amen.
I’m glad I’m nothing like them.
Girls with fake tans and fake hair scrunch their noses at me all the time;
they walk by, swooshing their skirts with their spastic ass-swaying walks, trying out the best ways to still look sexy and unique while all wearing the same uniform.
I really can’t believe how slutty tenth graders can be while going from their lockers to the cafeteria.
I’ve seen more ass in these hallways than a boy my age in a public high school has seen in his whole life.
You could get herpes in a place like this just by opening the door to the girls’ bathroom.
Thou shalt be a whore and contaminate genitals in every which direction during your spare period.
I’m so fucking sick of this place.

Sit like that again, yeah, just like that.
I hear the click and see the flash, I’m an exotic bird, just a bird, I love this freedom, he gives me so much freedom.
Take that off and stand like that. Do it right this time.
Click, flash.
I wonder which exotic, nearly extinct bird is white.
You know I love you right?
I know.
Show me.
I do. I always do.

I don’t show up for homeroom today,
I don’t show up to any of my classes.
I don’t care to hear more about this Jesus bullshit,
I don’t really like Science all that much, it freaks me out
to learn how things work.
When they find me, I’m in the room above the stage,
the one with all of the old props and costumes and set pieces lying around;
things that once made something beautiful while put together are now taken apart.
I am in the middle of the room and I am painting and when they find me, my face is wet and my skin is purple and blue and white white white white.
They ask me what’s wrong, what am I doing, why am I painting so much red all over the paper. Why am I painting red?
Why are you painting red?
Because, I say, I couldn’t stand to see the white anymore. There was so much fucking white, you would do the same.
You would. I know you would.