When you were feeding me pesticides, you asked if you were poison.

No, of course not.

How can you be poison when the fruit is so sweet?


When your control over me spread like cancer, you asked if you were a disease.

No, of course not.

There is nothing alarming about you, nothing to widen my eyes at with worry.


When I choked on my tears, you asked if you were a flood ready to drown us both.

No, of course not.

You are nothing like the unyielding water, scratching at the rock until it was as smooth as them.


When your short fuse scotched me, you asked if you were a fire destined to burn down the world.

No, of course not.

You are warm and safe, but not dangerous-
I mouthed silently at night.


When I was lying on the floor, barely clinging to consciousness, you asked if you were death.

No, of course not.

Death is merciful.
Death is inescapable.


When I was dreaming of you, you asked again if you are all of those horrible things.

Yes.

Yes you were.

I sent you a letter.

I'm sorry that I didn't just say it out loud,
but I couldn't look at you as our faces mirrored each other's heartbreak.

Yours then mine.


I couldn't be there as you struggled to give me an answer,
couldn't just tell you without giving you space.

I wish I could talk to you,
that my mouth won't fill with silence when it is opened.

That I'll stop wrapping the silence around me, desperate for its warmth in freezing days.


Yet still,

I sent you this letter, dear mother, because the waves held my face under your turbulence of expectations and the currents needed to change.

I didn't want to drown.


Forgive me for this letter, dear father, I know you prefer ignorance but it only leads to hate and anyway,

mother always says there's nothing you love more than your children and I didn't want to become a stranger.


I know this is hard, but I wish it wasn't.

I wish you'd paint your face with my colors, cheer from the stands, celebrate my existence as it is.


Still, I don't expect you to understand it,
I know it's foreign and new in your eyes.


I don't want you to tell me you still love me and that your love would always be unconditional,

I want to never have questioned it at all.


I don't want your sympathy.

There's nothing to be sad about, nothing to fix, nothing to mourn.

The future you visioned for me was never real, you never asked me anyway.


I don't want your acceptance.

It's just blank pages and silent mouths, I want your support.

The world is sharp and I just want to know you'll be there to clean away the blood.


I had to tell you because whenever I thought of who I am and heard your voice carried in the wind, I flinched and tensed as if you could look into my mind.


I needed to tell you because I am tired of hiding away flags and pins and scarfs,
bite my tongue around a joke,
overthink every passing comment that falls from your mouth.


I had to tell you because most of all I needed an answer.


So now,

please,

just write me back.

I need to be there at five ten (17:10)

It won't be 'the worst' if I were to be late by a minute or so,

just disappointed looks and silent judgment.

Perhaps they won't even notice.


And anyway, five ten (17:10) is in five hours.

I need to be at the bus stop at five (17:00), it's a five, maybe eight, minutes drive and I should be there by five five (17:05) ,mybe five eight (17:08),

at any rate I'll be there before five ten (17:10).


It takes me ten minutes to get dressed so I better set my alarm to four thirty (16:30), just to be safe.


So now I have five hours to myself before I need to get ready.

I can watch tv on my computer, or bake cookies.

I have so much time!

...maybe not baking.


There are three more hours until my alarm rings.

Wait, did I set it right?

Yes.

Maybe I should give myself more time to organize, you never know what can happen!

Four twenty (16:20) it is.


It's two hours until I have to get ready and I keep glancing at the clock in the corner or my computer.

I'll just put on the clothes I need,

get out of the comfort of my pajamas, into my tight clothes.


The alarm rings

but I'm already dressed, my water bottle filled, my wallet in my purse, everything is where it should be.


I set my alarm again:

It's a minute or so of walking to the bus stop and I need to be there by five sharp (17:00).

I set my alarm to five minutes to five (16:55).


There's half an hour before I need to go.

The show is still running but I've stopped watching forever ago.

What if there won't be a bathroom there? I should go to the bathroom now.


Well that only took four minutes, I have twenty six more to burn.

I'm pacing in my room, the computer put away.

What if I'll need to *** there? Great now I need to *** again and I've already peed five minutes ago.


I better get going.


I've been waiting for the bus for ten minutes when the alarm rang.

Fifteen minutes of waiting for the bus in the scorching sun, wiping away sweat like drops of anxious thoughts, is fine.

It's normal, right?

I don't have time to worry about it.

It's better than the feeling of the stress on my skin, pushing on my organs until I suffocate.


It's five (17:00) and the bus still hasn't arrived.

It's fine.

It's FINE.

It's F I N E.


Two minutes later I'm sitting on the bus, waiting for my stop.

Chest heaving, I step back into the street, thanking the driver goodbye.


I don't see anyone.

This is where we're supposed to meet, right?

Yes, definitely.

It's today, right? This hour?

Yes and yes.


Oh,
I'm just the first one here.

I live to defy what you taught me.


"Girls are weak"

I received the message. I rejected it.

With my chubby arms, the arms of a child, I picked up the table, twice my size, and carried it across the

yard,

forest,

desert,

ocean,

wherever it needed to go.

I basked in adult adoration of my strength. My sharp look scorching all who dared to offer assistance.

Kindness or a sense of superiority- motive be dammed.

I've grown up with the world as my witness.

I've learned to never ask for help.


"Girls are emotional"

Emotions are a weakness, for you think of girls as weak.

I must not be weak, for the world is watching.

And so, I've locked in the drawer of my mind every troubling thoughts, every emotion.

They are still there, unreachable. Rotting.


I grew up to be numb.

I grew up to be a hypocrite.

I would preach about the health benefits of crying. I would be horrified to listen to myself.

Forbidden to even share my passions by my own brain.

I'm fine-

I'm a mess-

at the same breath.

One is the lashing out of self defense,

The other is a painful admittance.

One is happily uttered when they catch my face,

The other is shamed and condemned.


I've grown up strong in every toxic sense of the word.

In my pursuit to defy what you dictated for me, I live my life as you dictated for yourself.


If the facade will ever go, it will not shatter nor dissappear.

If I will dictate my own life for myself, it will take as long as the rebuilding of the world.

My vains, they're coursing with ink from all the words I did not say, from all the details about me I did not care to share.

Because what could I say to make you understand the pain of hiding me away?



The boulder of emotion that drops down and ignites the empty hole where my heart should be every time you speak of a future that I would rather not have at all than go along with your plans.



The flinch I suppress whenever you speak of a husband or kids that I would be forced to bear in your oh so pink future,

Pink that is so bright in your eyes but dark and dripping in mine.


The decision I make as my hands dig into my chest in an attempt to reach up into my heart and relieve the pain of being ashamed of what I am- of who I am.

It's becoming too much!


The waiting
for the perfect moment to let the ink pour from my tongue all over your too clean floor.


The fear of your reaction knowing your liberal approach is only for what you've been taught is right to love and wrong to hate, knowing that you do not want to learn and believe in anything you deem as new.



The step back I take as I ask myself;
"Is it really worth it?"

Telling myself that I don't owe you ****.

You have sowed the seeds of self hate with your casual heteronormativity in my mind and now you have no right to its flowers whose colorful petals I have struggled to maintain.

But even back here, it's getting hard to ignore the spark of the possibility of freedom that turned into a fire ready to consume my mind and body.


The hope that you will accept me for simply being me. That you will put down the raging flames of worry in my heart.


The smoke is far too close to my lunges to keep me hidden any longer.

Each breath comes shorter as time goes by, the heavy numbness of a fainting spell on my doorstep.


The answer.

YOUR answer, the part that will either burn me with the scorching shock of your disbelief or will carry me to peace by the black river of your reassurance.


My story,

the one you hear right now,

that will never be finished for the smoke has choked me as the ink came raining down my eyes, down my throat, in a vain attempt to keep the fire at bay.

I don't want to die.

Death is so dramatic,
It changes plans and ruins days.
It affects more than one life.

No,
I want to disappear.

I want to one day be gone from the face of the planet,

the only hint that I ever was there in the sticker I gave my friend in kindergarten,
still stuck into a long forgotten notebook or a puppet.

The only memory left of me in the bag of someone who forgot to give back the pencil they borrowed.

The only trace of me,
in fading wet footprints on the sidewalk between puddles.


They say that when you die, you either go to heaven or to hell.

Or maybe you'll be incarnated into a delicate butterfly flapping its wings to the sound of a powerful stream.

Each believe in their own heaven,
imagining the perfect world for them.

And isn't that exciting?
That there's a life after death?


How do I explain, then, that my heaven is

the pitch blackness of the unending unconsciousness.

The quiet rest of the ground.

The forever closed eyes and

the stillness of the heart.


Living is the debt I pay for the world.
Why would I want to pay forever?


Someone once told me it sounds like I want to die and I said

No,
I want to disappear.