[tracilicious]

In the 5am light Lena couldn’t see the beer bottles and cigarette butts that littered her bedroom floor. She could barely see the face of the beautiful boy who lay on the bed next to where she was sitting. Carlos? Was that his name? She had been drawn to his angst and his beauty and the tattoo on his neck. A few hours ago she had licked his track marks while he f*cked her. In the drunk of night he had told her that he believes in castrating rapists and selective breeding. Now he just looked like a little boy with blue punk gunk in his hair.

Lena stood up slowly and braced herself against the wall while the blood returned to her head. She bent down and groped around for her thong and tank. She slipped them over her bony ass and flat chest. In the half-light before dawn she almost looked beautiful, in that car wreck sort of way. She stumbled out of the room and thudded down the stairs. She was careful not to look at the kitchen as she kicked clothes and pizza boxes out of her way. Grown ups don’t live like this, Lena muttered.

Someone she didn’t know was sleeping on top of her roommate on the couch, so she slid open the glass door slowly and crept into the dark. The rough gravel in the tiny condo yard poked into her soft pink feet. It was the realest thing Lena had felt in a long time. She maneuvered her way over to the old ladder on the side of the condo, climbed up to the roof and sat down.

A lone star shone in the fading dark. She stared at it as reminders of her wretched life crept up her spine and started shouting in her head. She stood up quickly and shook them off. Lena stretched her arms out wide, looked straight into the sky and started to spin. Her feet turned around each other slowly at first. Every other turn or so her toes would curl around the edge of the roof. She regained her balance and spun faster. Lena’s eyes closed as her hair whipped her cheeks. She took deep gulping breaths of the cold fresh air that eddied around her. She felt alive, and for Lena, that was unusual.

As Lena spun she pictured her nearly naked flesh covered in scars. Each scar began to molt away and fly into the dawn. Goodbye emotional instability. Goodbye self-loathing. Goodbye drugs and booze and caffeine and sugar and starving and vomiting and diet pills. Goodbye two guys a night.

Lena stopped. She waited two seconds for the dizziness to subside and the she cracked her eyelids. She was looking straight into the rising sun. It took her a bit to figure out what she was feeling. It was hope.

“Hope.” She said out loud.

“I am the goddamn motherf*cking phoenix reborn.” She said with a small degree of amazement.


“I AM THE PHOENIX REBORN!” Lena’s hoarse voice resounded into the newborn morning.


She grabbed a roof tile and chucked it at her pervert neighbor who was leaning out his window aiming his camera phone at her and catcalling. Lena quickly descended the ladder and went into the house to pack up her ****. She hoped that this time she could leave the ashes behind.