Fox Henry Frazier
GANGSTER BLOOD AND FINAL GIRLS
What do you call a girl whose DNA already understands
how to disappear? As in, our forebears fucked with cartels,
pissed off the Crown, had to slip quickly unseen into new
worlds: passless portless peerless we grew up
wrist-bangers, cutters, addicted by age eight to our hot pink slap
bracelets. By eleven, playing quarters with the boys. Nickels stick hard
in your knuckles but there was something elegant about that thinner,
spinning, minted silver. Our fingers were so delicate: when either of us
toppled a coin, it was because we already understood our power
was proving exactly how much more we could bleed. What do you call
a girl whose DNA already understands the game where friends
choke each other out until one goes weak-kneed? Disjointed fingers, unsocketed arms,
elbows bent backwards until one squeals mercy? There are certain
countries she can’t go back to. Certain states she’ll never be able to enter.
I was most in my element doing candlewax spills on different
parts of my body, girlfriends admiring the gasp and the burn like they could
learn from me. They could. I held my fingers in fire and counted
the occasional blister a trophy. Nail polish is flammable, but pain
is beauty and all lines blur with pus and ooze at some point. My great-grandmother
was bulleted into pieces in front of her children by angry men with guns. Who
could blame her sons for whatever they grew up to be,
or the children of their blood, one of whom then begat me? What do you
call a girl whose DNA choreographs the routine of how to cut herself apart
for fun because against your kind, she’ll always be the only one
walking away while the credits unspool? What did you think we were
playing this game for if not the better to quietly bleed
you out while you enjoy watching us bite our lips and moan?