Ta hen piao liang- she's beautiful

Ni hen piao liang- you're beautiful

Mei Mei

I will concede to occasional instances of over dramatization.

It's so very easy to think; when you're drunk it's even easier. I said I had a headache and he handed me the whole bottle.

He turned away.

Children take one pill, two for adults.

Four for two adults, six for three.

And then at the moving celebration children take coke, wine for adults. I don't need glasses, my vision's 18/20 because his is only eight, you add ten.

Wong likes to go to bed at seven thirty. Thirty for fifteen.

She was such a beautiful distraction, she made me love the office, she made the walls alive. If I didn't need to be here I'd be sober by her window with a place I know to rest my head, wherever it's going, my head. Are these my feet? I'm…

walking… yes, I am.

My stomach hurts (unlike my head) and it's not from empty, red-glossed cups. It's been hell, honestly, to come here, because I was born on the eleventh, there is no thirteenth month. I love her, not the one in my heart, the one who flies with her heels through his outstretched fingers and cries in his palm. Twelve moons, thirteen shine between us. This is the bedroom, mine's by hers, this is their bedroom (it's also next to hers). To see something everyday that you want to claim but cannot have is hell, honestly.

18 out of 20. Two…take four.

I'm not paying attention to closing their door, I'm going to throw up my guilt and the water closet's three seconds too far away. My stomach hurts. The cracks in the tiles remind me of myself, teeny rivets through my skull, a marching band of flaw parading to a song I hear someone singing right now; I'm the only one in the room, on the floor.

I'm in the water closet actually.

The mirror tells me I've been laying on the ground for longer than I thought and that the chipping is showing on the outside these days, lines in two four across my cheek.

Wong's been asleep for six hours.

I'm so happy to find that I don't think about her lips or her arms or her eyes when I'm drunk. Her skin, her tongue. Thirteen tongues. Fifty for thirteen. I'm perverted when I'm sober because twenty-nine minus sixteen is one moon more than what it should be, two more months.

Nine months to kill me first. What if there were… nine months…I'm standing…

yes, I am. Because the drawers fell out on the floor and something's in them in someone's hand. I can make this right, I know I can. He'll be so happy. She'll be safe. That would be perfect. The sheets are white so I'll spread out my jacket, much better. I'm going to go to sleep and I'll wake up sober, I won't wake up a pedophile. I should have flushed lust down the commode, but I wasn't thinking.

One, the first, for the third birthday, sixteen matches sixteen. Her hair was short then too. The second is for an empty bed I fit in that smelt like spring. It's warm. The third is for a phone call from an eight year old who remembered her language and the only head that shone gold not black. Add ten. The forth became the seventh before I realized I could smell blood. I shouldn't have wrapped the package, or gripped the pillow, or held the phone. I can't now, I won't be able to. It's beautiful on my wrists, on my sleeves. It drips like rain from the edge of wood roofs, fast and assuring. Thirteen.

I should close the door.

It's very bad that this is the most exciting thing I've done in years.

Someone's being watched because there are screams in the hallway and Wong is asleep, I needed to close the door before. Thirty? For her smile at dinner tonight, my lucky numbers from the fortune cookie: one, two, three, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty nine, thirty.

Only two to go…across or down? The razor blade enters at the left and pulls across, over the veins and off on the right. One. Now on the right, across, and off on the left. Two. Perfect.

I won't touch her, I can't touch her now. We're safe. Eight out of twenty… looks like blurs… add ten… to twenty… thirty pills… subtract sixteen… fourteen glasses.

"Bak- Bak!" He came to see, I fixed it, he came. I hold out my hands to show. Someone dropped the razor, up above my head, and I watch for the smile, we're safe.

He's crying. He keeps his eyes on me and his hands from his face because someone in the room next to me is standing in the doorway and they can't watch.

The white gets stained anyway, the hem of his lab coat as he comes to me on his knees.

"Ge Ge…" he's holding the red gloves to his face and the saline stings the cuts in my hands. "Ge Ge, t-ta hen piao liang." I was wrong…he's so unhappy. "Ta hen piao liang…"

I'm passing out while he cradles my head on his shoulder.

"Ni hen piao liang."

I cry.