Girl King
The first thing I did was be born. My screams were so loud they thought I was a boy.
Someone said, like a thousand fists punching through a thousand windows. The summer was so hot the orchard caught fire, and water dripped down the insides of the palace windows and rotted the wood.
The second thing I did was kill Descartes. The winter was so cold you could crunch on flower petals like ice. His lungs froze up. I had told him not to come in winter. I told him to go home. But men don’t listen to women. In this way I became a murderer.
The third thing I did was run away, naturally.
