Broken heels, glitter on my cheeks, my body warm with fermented earth. 
I stood like a flamingo—drunk—perched with uncertainty against a graffitied wall with the weight of my body resting haphazardly on one foot. 
Like the damsel in distress my mother taught me to be, each of my ankles was ready to give way in the fickle straps that barely secured it—all I needed was a tall, dark, and handsome stranger to rescue me. 
He approached, like a shred of creeping moonlight in the forest. 
His body taut, strung like a bow—ready to release. 
I beckoned him the subtle shifting of my skirt—I was shaking, but all the while, I lingered for the sheer thrill of it. 
His hands traveled across my body, and my words slurred as I mumbled my fantasies into his welcome ear. 
Later, my need to piss beckoned me into the darkened nooks of the alleyway—I shifted my skirt, as I had for him— and the pooling liquid began to stream like fluorescent ribbons in the dirt and gravel 
Only a few feet away from the nearest person-- I released myself. 
At the time, I thought I was unafraid of the person people saw me as; so long as I was the one that controlled how they saw me. 
But in reality I had never been so scared as I was in that moment.
Not because of all of the things that could’ve happened to me in that penetrating darkness.
But rather, I was afraid of who I was becoming.