painted red

the girl in the mirror keeps something behind her teeth. it sits there, warm and restless. a habit she picked up from being watched too early.


she learned it young—a woman's body is a place everyone feels entitled to read, but rarely bothers to understand. so she draws a line. red. the color of wanting. of choosing. of blood that isn't always hers but always means something. she wears it on her mouth as a declaration.


her heels rest beside her, one leaning into the other like they're done for the day. they have carried her through rooms where she figured out how to shrink without bending.


the mirror fits in her palm like a small, stubborn truth. she lifts it. the face that looks back is not the one she wore this morning. it is older. hungrier. it has been asking the same question since she was taught to fold her legs and call it modesty—as if containment were a virtue.


who gets to name what lives in me?


the lipstick is her answer. steady. practiced. the hand of someone who has rebuilt herself so many times the original feels less like a memory and more like a rumor. she paints slowly. the red settling into the lines of her mouth.


she bites because no one ever taught her to speak. some things were swallowed before they could take shape. others folded in on themselves until they disappeared.


what stayed grew teeth.


the girl in her head is not a girl anymore.


she runs through a house that burned down years ago, smoke still clinging to the walls. she licks the frosting from her fingers. too sweet, almost rotten. sugar shrouding the taste of ash.


you left me here, the girl says.


i came back, the woman replies.


you came back painted.


the woman does not answer. she's been covering the soft parts for so long it’s hard to tell if they are healing or just hidden. that even now, she feels the weight of eyes that are no longer there.


she presses her lips together. the red holds. a subtle act of keeping herself from coming apart long enough to remember she belongs to her own keeping.


she paints for the girl in her head. the one who still runs. the one who felt hunger before she had the language for it.


she slips her foot into the heel. the other. then she stands. the city hums under her skin. the witching hour does not stop to notice a woman reclaiming her mouth. that’s fine. she isn't doing it for the night anyway.


she is doing it for the hunger behind her teeth,
the one that has been waiting—mouth open.



Written by Ma. Brejette Jan Cometa
Art by Edgar Señoron II