He told me I look like a renaissance painting and you can see it at first glance. My soft stomach, cheeks made for a grandma to grab, round eyes and perky tits. I’ve always looked approachable in that way, assuming that birds were angels and their singing was God’s way into the soul. I’ve always thanked the bus driver and bought the first round of drinks.
So I wonder what she would think if she heard that. In a house with glass ridden floors, I refused to wear socks. In a house with holes in the walls, I’d stick my hands in just to feel the dust. It took 7 days to get me out. Born not crying but screaming, the number 4 between my eyebrows. I was born rejecting God. I was born begging to be recognised.
I tried to eat courtesy like every other little girl and swallowed it whole. ‘Thank you’ and ‘I’m sorry’ became the sweets of my youth, rotting my teeth away until I couldn’t chew. And I am forever grateful that my tongue is filled with bite scars. That I can finally be silent without bleeding.
I spend every waking moment curdling my throat to ask for my trespasses to be forgiven. And if I am redeemed, if I was virtuous enough, maybe a bird will perch itself on my window sill and maybe he’ll bring heaven to earth and I will be able to talk once more. I could put my actions into words and be so fucking harsh, like I was created to be. Eating, drinking, speaking, loving, hating, fucking, I could never do any of it grey. It’s all or nothing baby, I am entirely obsessed or completely apathetic. It is black or it is white from when it is dark until I see the light.
When I am soft, I am fragile, I’m so fucking breakable.
When I am tough, I am jagged, I am fucking untouchable.
And so, my darling, I love to love and I love you so much, but I am far from the tenderness you crave. You can’t experience safety from danger, as I can’t have love without violence. So you run into my arms to rest for a little while, you put up with rough elbows and sharp nails because at least you can sleep here. I try to kiss your cheeks but it's more like a bite. And what do you expect?
I like to be hit and strangled during sex. I walked on glass barefoot. The women of my family marry men who are engulfed in anger to see if their punches can match our sobs. And when they do we never leave. We never leave because devotion is to be under the threat of the knife, the brick, the gun, and still be told ‘I love you’ at bedtime. They slap us silent and kiss us before we can take a breath, their spit filling our mouths, digesting their lineage. and I have no clue how to live on my own. I have no fucking idea how to separate gentleness from performance.
The 4 on my forehead has to be God’s biggest joke. Like he put it there for his own entertainment, like he grew tired of being benevolent. And I am the product of that exhaustion. They say we have to behave in God’s image and I execute it perfectly. All the contradictions in the bible, all the war and hatred, embodied in a baby girl that arrived with dirt under all 10 finger nails and all 32 teeth. I was born rotting. I live to breathe and I will not grieve as I die.
He said I looked like a renaissance painting.
Ladybirds land on me and I still search for birds in the trees.
I am never going to heaven.
My hands will hold yours forever.
