growing around cyanide
peach pits and girlhood, it’s not a mistake.
my thighs are cold from the granite counter of my bathroom, the edges lining the skin beneath my knees. the unframed, worn mirror reflects smeared red lipstick, my mother’s oxidised silver earrings, and my kohl-rimmed eyes. outfits litter my bedroom floor, molten moonlight making collages of half-remembered tragedies all over black and white carpet. my skirts are either too loose or too tight, meanwhile all they’re saying is femininity lives in the span of my hips, the length of my hair, and the sheen of my skin.
whenever i’m alone, fresh air smells like ash.
i slip the cheap silver rings off their ceramic dish, sliding them onto my fingers. they make themselves at home at the base of them — nestling between every bone, blunder and bloom — glinting if i poise them just right. the thing snarling and snapping inside my chest is quieter with a little embellishment — muzzled — it no longer crawls up my throat and settles on my tongue. glitz and glamour, the ruinous science of lengthy rituals, has always cloaked the monstrosity that is a teenage girl. they say girlhood is in the plushness of your lips, the arch of your back, the womb in your stomach, and the ampleness of your chest. when they wish to talk about her demeanour, it is about the palatability of her anger, exquisiteness in her suffering, politeness in her appetite and satiability of her desires.
womanhood is first and foremost a sight; the yawning chasm between nine letters gets shamed into ultraviolet silence.
i have always grown around cyanide. sickly sweet when the centre scares me, bristling and nasty when my veils tire and i want to infect. all the world may be a stage, but the curtain drops to a scene no one wants to see, a script that is daringly damning, a cast that will inevitably be wicked, disarmingly charming and cunning in its intellect. the madness of my very existence is all-consuming, and it’s a catalogue free for all to see.
i don’t know where this monologue goes. no flesh that wraps such poison remains untouched, pure, or sweet. the tyranny of the past grovels over the choices of the present, and i’m left holding the infected pieces, trying to put them back together.
but what’s sick is not always fatal. and luckily, since i was very young, i became proficient at dressing wounds.