The Mayors Daughter. They spit the words out, they ostracise it, leave it empty and unwanted. It's a curse. A word that no good person should be addressed. Disgusting and shameful.

It's my name.

Shame. It bleeds into my father's face, clutches at my mother's heart. It suffocates my lungs. It's not our fault, it's no one's fault. It cannot be changed. It's just the way it is. But that doesn't change anything. What I want is spectacular, is beyond the boundaries, is useless to dream of. Eyes of steel, heart of steel. The problem is not that he is blind to me, but that he chooses to look away.

Him. He breathes in coal, I breathe in perfume. Neither of us breathe in fresh air, we both choke, barely survive. He could starve, could burn, could lose who he loves. It's horrible and saddening. Me? I suffer from heartache, I cannot laugh, and I am lonely. It's selfish and pathetic.

I am too lucky to feel this way. Much too spoilt to waste it for nothing.

The coal is everywhere. Ingrained in our skin, it blackens our hearts and darkens our hands. It's the earth claiming us as its own, trying to take us back from what we have become. It anchors us. It clouds the air and covers the streets, enters our lungs and changes the way we breathe. It makes it harder, the air less clearer, it makes us stop, and it makes us think. It keeps us human. Not like them.

It does not punish them.

The girl with the dark hair, the girl with the voice, the girl with the fire. She did listen, she did not hear, but she listened. She was generous, she did not need the unnecessary, the petty things. She did not need me. And so she leaves me to my empty house and piano, she hunts, she breathes, she survives.

I do not know how to survive.

The air lifts my lungs, lets them fall. My muscles tell me to move, my head tells me to think. My piano tells me to be. My fingers crawl onto the white teeth, they fall and lie, and they lift themselves up again. Again, again. They fall in patterns, they fall in discord.

I am not enough.

And so I sit, as it rains in my head. I watch the birds, I watch them breathe, and I watch them survive. I watch a thousand birds fly, and watch them smash to pieces in my mind. Break like glass. They turn into air, into shards, into nothing. Like me. But still they fly on. And I sit, a shadow cast against the wall, a quiet sigh, a breath of air.

I am nothing.