Being as young as I am lends me victim-status, which is a permission and what makes it a taboo. Because if I wait until I'm older it won't carry the same immediate vein of alarm. But that alarm comes from the fact that I shouldn't say it at all. Would you consider that a contending loyalty?

But I make do with what I can scrape, and this empty promise of a body is enough to work with. I only think I deserve it. I've certainly accreted enough; carried it well enough.

Out of anything I want to believe.