There is a twist and a bite and a snap. There is the breaking of bones, of veins, of will. There is the weight of unwantedness that presses and presses and presses. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You are alone in this. You stand in the room, where voices boil over until all you can hear is silence. You were told you\u2019d be safe. There is a bear trap locked around your ankle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You cannot run and you cannot scream or kick or thrash. There is a spike through your vocal chords and no words come out. You smile around it. You nod. You drag your bleeding leg towards the door. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, no, no. You do not think you can flee now, do you? But there has not been cake, there has not been the celebration of what you cannot do. You must wipe the red staining your lips and flash your teeth to show you are alive. You must move your hands like this, you must choke as so, you must thank those that kick at the metal teeth against your flesh. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Must you? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yes, must you. Must you stand there and suffer. Must you stand there and grin. Must you be the bigger person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Must you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You are growing weary of the pain. You are finding yourself feeling the fur against your chest. You can see your nails sharpen to points. The animal is coming out. You must be stronger than it. You must.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Must you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
No, no, no, you mustn\u2019t. No, no, no, you should let your fangs push through. No, no, no, you should let your body twist and bite and snap. No, no, no, if they treat you as an animal, you should let the animal treat them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is the breaking of bones. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of veins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of will. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a twist and a bite and a snap. There is the breaking of bones, of veins, of will. There is the weight of unwantedness that presses and presses and presses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[525],"tags":[158,157,12,114,97,37],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27tjX-Ba","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2304"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2305,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2304\/revisions\/2305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/winter-publishing.com\/welcome-to-winter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}