okay but what does it say when the only time I identify with my agab is when she’s dead
and not even the traditional “she’s dead and I killed her” because I didn’t, I don’t resent her that way, I don’t know that she’s even totally gone
dead in the sense of when I was thirteen there was Me and then the version of me I wanted to drown in the bathtub. because I was angry, because I wanted to protect her, because I wasn’t sure if that finally meant we’d be free of what people in that fucking place wanted from me
dead in the sense of I felt out of time, out of place, like something had already happened to me and I never got off that operating table when I was twelve and they thought it was cancer
dead in that the only time I felt beautiful was when I looked like I hadn’t seen the sun in years, where my makeup looked like shock from exposure, or like there was blood across my mouth that might even have been mine
dead as in I keep writing stories about women who claw their way out of the grave and don’t quite know what they are now, if they’re even still alive, if they even want to be women anymore because they’re too tired to get the cemetery dirt out of their hair
this weird in-between where people call me “ma’am” at work and I smile like I’m hiding fangs behind my upper lip, tight and not quite real because the masquerade is safer lately, but ugh, having to keep up the sunlight charade is a chore
dead as in “you killed her, and I am the thing that came back in her place” with everything that threatens and promises
I don’t hate her, she doesn’t haunt me, but she lingers. sometimes she possesses me and sometimes she’s separate, a second reflection in my mirror
we’re at peace, even if our house creaks and groans with phantom footsteps
