Strong girl

What really is pure, can a person be compared to the pavement after rain, the cry of a newborn baby, the tears of my mother finding out. ‘You’re such a strong girl’ she says, I nod and take what I assume is a compliment. I’ve always had a complicated relationship with my mother, she wouldn’t know, she tells me it keeps her up at night, I tell her I slept well. She tells me she cries; I tell her I don’t know how to. ‘you’ll understand when you have a daughter’ feels like a kick to the gut, why can I not understand now. She’s right to an extent. Too young, too naïve, too little, too clean to understand your own wound, covered in blood and battle scars. But not too youthful, too innocent, too sinless to be sacrificed by your own girlhood.

I reflect upon the men I see, the ones who hold doors open, moving out your way whispering notes of polite apologies. Would you have done that; would you have hurt me. The men I care for are not exempt, instead I listen closer, hearing sighs and moans I didn’t before. My eyes open to a new world of exploitation, my mother, aunts and sisters always the punchline.  I count the women on the bus, in the shop, in the bar, divide the number by three and you find how many have been given the gift of eternal pain. A pain that never seems to stop. Its candlelight flutters, being choked from oxygen, but comes back in a harsher blaze. Spilling more wax each time.

The wax spills over my fresh linen sheets, soiled that will never be clean. The stain never comes out. You wash it numerous times, cold cycles, hot cycles, bleach and detergents, it will never be the same. Days are soft, they bleed together, suddenly it’s a week, then a month and now over a year. ‘Time heals everything,’ said the liars. I’ve become weary of the sweetest cons, giving me false faith, that things could be like the past. Before a part of my soul depleted. of course, I would never say that, not even a hiss. I confide in myself, retracing nightmares and what ifs, searching for a remedy, a night nurse to numb the grief of the violation.

I never put a washing on anyway. Too much exertion for my mind, my melancholy has bought a share of land in my head, evicting the other tenants one my one. ‘Don't be lazy’ mother says, I spend too much time thinking to be lazy. Sometimes I break and let out a blunt reply; I'm trying to cope with all the thoughts attacking me at once, puncturing my Injury to open it up each day. I struggle with life not doing my dishes. She again tells me I'm a strong girl; the second time never sounds as sincere.