This is How You Hide It
By Chloe Seim
Scrubbing is for children. Rake yourself clean. Draw blood. Rub salt into the wound.
Cover it. Your mother thinks you are a good girl. A controlled factor. You are not a liability but if she discovers it, you will be. You will cost her. You will cost your sister. You will cost your grandmother. Everyone. You could not measure the loss in inches or dollars, but it will hurt and it will linger.
Lace not gauze but wax paper over the wound. The soft creasing and crackling of the paper will be just enough to remind you of the bad thing that you have conjured, of who you’ve become. It will go unnoticed by your mother and the others. You will bleed onto the wax paper in increments over the next three days, droplets folding into your underwear for the paper is impregnable.
Hide the underwear in the dark beneath your dresser, out of sight. Hide it and remind yourself, it is just a casual hand’s reach away.
THE END