She's mud.

You can tell by the way it bubbles up and pools in her eyes, by the way it spurts and grows from her head and bristles under her arms and between her legs. All this brown. All this filthy, rotten brown - for a filthy, rotten girl.

And just like mud, everything sticks and sinks into her. Their unkind words, their lying glances and false laughs - they all stick and sink and slip into her head forever. And she can't get rid of them. Yes, she can try and dissolve them, try to absorb them and make them a piece of her - pretend that being treated like trash is just one of her infinite strengths. But it's all just pretending. And mud is everything honest.

But though the world is overflowing with mud - spurting it from every corner, suppressing it beneath concrete and roots - sometimes there is a piece of gold. Somewhere, hidden between the perfumed smiles and rotting teeth - between the gilded mirrors and the mirror shards some kid drives into her repulsive flesh - somewhere, there's the Truth.

His name is Byakuya, and he is the Truth, the Way, and All Things Holy. He is ten gods and one white night. He is cruel and unkind and harsh and unmerciful, and she so desperately wanted his lips, his breath, his mind.

Sometimes, he tosses flecks of gold into the mud, into the rotten river. And she swallows it, swallows it down with all the bones and trash and disgusting things this world has filled her up with. And maybe, maybe maybe it wriggles down into her heart, starts to cleanse the river - lets new life grow there.

Or maybe, maybe maybe - she just grabs onto it. She searches inside herself, sticking her hand through her feculent entrails and pan for his gold. A needle in a haystack, a camel through the needle, a rich man never getting into heaven. She is the haystack, she is the needle, she is the heaven. She will find his gold, she will find his tight lipped, soft lined words of praise and she will hate herself for it.

Oh yes, he is too kind. He can see the worst in her. The best in her. He can make her yewl and mewl and toss and turn and sweat and beg, beg, beg not god but byakkkkuyyaaaa-samaaaa. He can see the worship on her. Smell it. He's repulsed by it. But if he can see one tiny shred of good, one thing worth praising - then she has a means, a way, a reason to please him! To be worthy enough for him! To be the muddy river that Christ walked upon, his Sea of Galilee. Hahaha, and maybe she won't drown him. Maybe she'll not be Hokusai's wave, she'll be calm and soft and be the support he needs, the throne he needs, the path he needs.

Maybe, maybe, maybe - but it's all a lie, anyway. Jesus didn't need the Sea of Galilee. He's using her. He's suppressing her. He's suffocating her. And she can't do anything, she can't do anything to worship, please, serve him.

She's worthless.

She's rotten.

She's mud.