Why Is It Whenever I Am Alone I Slip My Hand Beneath My Black Wool Jacket And Find Any Wound I Can And

Why do they call my brother a genius, when he cannot comprehend kindness? When his tongue is tied in any conversation but his own?

Why is the emotional intellect of the women in the room discarded? So often shamed out of me any desire to share myself, my thoughts, upsetting my family feels like embers landing on every inch of skin searing me to silence. The boy gets to be a boy his entire life. The girl has to be a woman the moment he enters the room.

I feel pressure to act not as a person, but as woman. To fill every void left by our absence, too little leaders of us, too little comedians of us, too little scientists of us; am I meant to choose what loss to make up for with just my one life?

Tattoo

There is an aching in my heart that I fear I can't articulate. The words would spill from my mouth as blood. Every beat in my chest, a promise that I will die if I am ever truly myself.

Why can’t you let me have anything? Why can’t you let me have anything? I ask the mirror.

The girl in it is too busy weeping to answer.

Hands wrapped around my neck squeeze tighter. I wonder if this is how I will die. My eyes bulge but I see nothing but black splotches and bright stars. Night has followed me into day, just as I dreaded it would. Just as I dreaded it would.

If there is nothing worthwhile in me, how do I go forward from here? How do I live as a creature and not the woman I thought I was?

The touch of your coat as you trot on by.

The green of your eyes as you gaze at the sky.

The scratch of your claws as you knock on my door.

I miss that sound dearly

for I do not hear it anymore.

I’ve a pin with a ball end pinched between my index and thumb. Ego inflating like boils in me, I pop every idea that I am something good, worthwhile. I wonder if a harsh inner critic is a blessing or a curse as she darts pushpins in my spirit, and punches holes in my identity until I am paper thin and hollow. Light as a feather taken by the slightest idea of greener grass; convinced going anywhere is better than here.

Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.

We see each other’s Instagram posts.

But we don’t talk much.

I know what he thinks of the current administration. He likewise knows what I think of it. We play music on the car radio and sing along, not saying the words aloud.

I hear the posts on his phone undulating like neon gelatin, sugary nothings calling to him. A mixed bag of nuts that instagram feed, one post is an ai cat driving a semi and the next a cry against the white identity under attack in America. They’re both for my father. The algorithm knows him better than I do, he listens to it more than his own daughter. Our conversations are rarely in words.

He has women up in his garage, I covered them with grumpy cat pictures when I was only a girl. Make it lighthearted, make it fun, my objection to his sexualization of women. Why am I so eager to cater? I am a woman now. He has maga hats now, Trump ornaments up when it isn’t even Christmas. On the other side of the ornament is a mirror. It’s poetic. I keep turning it around, putting Trump’s face toward the wall and the mirror toward my father begging him to look. He turns it back around. How can I look at someone when they cannot look at themselves? How can I speak to him when we never have?