Chapter 4
Alive?
No, at least not anymore.
Dead?
No, I don’t think I ever was.
Stephany clipped the slim pieces of equipment behind her ears.
She flipped the volume back and forth.
Up and down.
Silence to static.
She drew pages of pages of nothing but dark shadings of bodies and places.
Barely recognizable
The sides of her hands covered to the points of almost staining Silver.
Reds graced other pages,
Hands
Faces
Her fingers smeared with red ink
Water,
Tears
Eyes
Her wrists and palms covered in watercolor paints.
Lines of missed placed acrylic paint
Covered most of her arms up to her elbows.
Sometimes gray paint spread across her face,
Over her nose
By her ears
In the roots of her hair
In her hair
Drowning in the paint, in chalk that covered her legs, she looked like an art project.
Dark circles brushed under her eyes,
Purples and blacks.
Placed with a well-swept paint brushed.
Her nails caked with dried paint.
The sticky substance of Spray Paint splattered across the empty space of her hands.
White And black flowers curling over her hands
inked
different
She was different.
They wanted and expected
she fought and gave what she was
never enough
she wasn’t what they wanted
not what the needed
but she could hardly remember what she needed or wanted anymore.
A spirl of something and everything.
Nothing and anything.
But that’s it.
No more no less.
And if she becomes Bitter and snappy.
She has a right.
Many would argue that she didn’t.
No one cared about the girl behind the mask.
No one did now.
No one did then.
Not a difference.
People don’t change
they only disappoint and expect.
And Stephany was Fucking sick and tired of the world.
Of people
of words she could no longer hear
Mostly she was tired.
She just wanted to be Stevie.
The small, smart mouth, Sarcastic, girl from Brooklyn.
Who didn’t have any self confidence, but acted like she could rule the world.
Who lived with her best friend, and was in love with a girl.
Wanted to be touchable again.
Wanted people to over look her, she used to want to be remembered.
For her art.
Not for dropping a plane in the ocean.
But no one wanted Stevie.
They wanted Captian America.
The living legend.
The woman who plowed through armies they where nothing.
But they forgot she was only a girl.
Not older than 25.
She was 22.
She should be stressing about school, about getting a job.
About living on her own.
Staying up late at night studying,
not covered in red paint like it was blood.
And what hurt the most?
Was that she tried,
and tired
and tried.
But no one wanted what she gave, they wanted more better.
And it was so much like Howard’s words towards her.
‘You have to be better! You aren’t better. You’re not even worth our time. Should have been a man.’
And sometimes she wished she could be “Better”
but Better than what?
Be better than Stevie?
Stephany could never be better than the little girl from Brooklyn.
Being Better hurt
it coiled in her stomach
and burned.
And no one ever asked how she was or what she thought.
They asked Captain America,
Not Stevie Rogers
There was a difference.
Always a difference.
and if someone now called her Stevie she’d probably start crying.
Because finally.
Someone sees
someone wants her.
Not Rogers.
Her.
And maybe it’ll make the burning stop.
But deep down with names she’s long buried with dates and smiles.
She knows it’ll never happen.
Because
No
One
Cares.