/lit/ - Literature

She is a poster-child. Big and overwrought. Huge neon letters warning unsuspecting folk about how their children can be molested for years and they'd never even notice.

You'd start to suspect when she's 15 or 17 and glaring at everyone and gets caught having sexual relations with a man four years older than her on the neighbor's veranda.
But you never ask. You don't want to think about it.

And when she's 34 years old, but pretending to be 22, flipping her bleached, platinum blond hair, her leathery orange skin pooling out of a tiny pink and white tutu, as if it enough tulle could give her class. When her big, plastic breasts staring you in the eye-- it's not even a question anymore.

You still wouldn't ever say it, you ignore it, even as you slowly set down the photograph. You bring the coffee cup to your lips. It's cool, almost unpleasant. When your nose crinkles in distaste, you realize your eyes feel damp although you know you haven't been crying. And it crosses your mind: when they find her body, strangled and raped to death, there isn't a dress or suit or tasteful makeup in the world that could hide from anybody just how pathetic she'd been.

With leaden hands, you turn on the tv, watch something high-brow, without any unnecessary violence or sex and where all the women year ankle length skirts. And it never really coagulates into a real, concrete thought, but you know you wouldn't even cry.