Burned

Once upon a time a girl decided to play with fire.

Once upon a time that girl got burned.

Once upon a time there was no way to heal her wounds.

Once upon a little girl got scarred.

That girl was me.

I was always going to be an outcast, nobody ever told me, but I knew.  I hid in the corner during playtime, even before the burn, and counted to tiny lines on my hand.  Once I heard that the longest line was supposed to be the lifeline, and the longer it was, the longer you were going to live.  I wanted to see how mine compared to the other kids, but their pointed fingers and mocking glares kept me at a safe distance.  My mom had died giving birth, and my father was an alcoholic.  My aunt came over most of the time to watch me and cook dinner, but sometimes when my dad and I were alone, he would slap me and call me nasty things.  I hated him up until the day he got killed in a drive by shooting.  Later, after all the legal papers were filled out and such, I was up for adoption.  My aunt was my legal guardian, but she claimed that caring for a small child like myself was too much work for her frail body to keep up with.  Lucky me got adopted a year later by a family by the name of Greene and moved out west to Oklahoma. We lived in a tiny ranch on the upper tip of the pot handle and my "mom" always claimed that the stars never shined brighter than right here, over the roof of their tiny 2 story house.  I went to school, had a relatively normal life, ate normally, worked normally, counted normally, but I was not normal.  At most I spoke hardly three words a day, and I refused to go to public places.  I looked normal, nothing was wrong with me, I just hated people.  People would abandon you and slap you and tell you that you're worthless, which is why I preferred to live in my head, rather than with others.    You could say that I was scarred for life by my past, as the metaphorical saying was strangely ironic, but that's for later. Life itself was hiding from what I knew, my past, my future, my life.  I was all alone in life, no friends, no family, no nothing.  Until the day when I got burned.