Forgive Me, Mother

Forgive me, Mother, for I have sinned. In the name you gave me on that hot summers night as your quivering-weak arms held me; I was just twelve damn minutes old. You should’ve known then. That child was not sane. But this isn’t for my mother, this is for you.

You, who stripped me naked, just like a bored child would do to a tree; peeling bark off the almost bare trunk—oh so vulnerable. And you left me on the ground and waited until I cracked under the pressure of your scuffed shoes I let you walk all over me with. The sound of my spine, the crunch & crack as I gave up beneath your weight.

It was your shadow in which drew the curtains shut before all of my windows. I was blind and in the dark; never knowing what you’d do next. And sometimes my fingertips would scrape the slithers of sunlight but you found that disrespectful. Maybe I wanted to feel some warmth. Maybe I wanted to go outside. This cage you built wasn’t for us, it was for me. And you had your noxious metal thorns keeping me hunched in your pathetic corner of reassurance, knowing damn well that I had no escape.

I was ‘yours,’ not even my own. You locked me up and tucked that key safely under ur pillow in which you peacefully slept on all those nights knowing I was lying on the same blood-stained mattress beside you.

But I saw gaps between those metal bars and my attempted escapes only had me wedged between freedom and you—iron teeth biting into my raw flesh. The scars were hard to hide. My mother would tell me that no bandage could heal wounds on the inside; ‘Your demons must be released, not hidden under a blanket of fear.’

But in that cage, I was your imprisoned fallen angel you wouldn't let out, and you were my manic demon I willingly had chained to the walls of my own mind. And I’d get those goddamn bolt cutters every day, ready to let you go, but the thought of releasing you into the wild jungles of my body and fucked up mind scared me the most. So I kept your wrists and ankles shackled to my own enclosure.

Yet, that filthy, passionate night you desired from me had your head in the grasp my hands. One twist of the neck and crack of a bone could’ve killed you. Your life was in my hands. But I didn’t want your callous blood to be the dirt stuck underneath my nails. So I kissed your neck until it turned purple, and you hit my eye for it to turn black.

And yet, they ask me why I stayed so long. And you know what the fuck I think? I think that mind-numbing question should be lit on fire at the hands of every woman who has ever been asked. Why. We. Stayed. So. Goddamn. Long. Because we were always running mid-air, we just never got the chance to reach that damned holy turf. Instead, we had to go through a gnawing labyrinth to get out of the hell hole in which he calls 'love.'

But love is not that.

Love is beautiful. Love is kind. Love is a desire in which is satisfied to its full potential by both people. But I was so malnourished of every grain and crumb of that and his 'love' for me destroyed my own love for me.

So I will get those goddamned bolt cutters, and unchain him from myself, I will crawl out of that backyard-build cage and I will be free. He is just as uncontrollable as a summer's storm; capricious and damaging to the core. But I am ready to give him a taste of his own blood for once, for mine is too sweet for his malicious tastebuds.

Forgive me, Mother, for I have sinned. You used your own strength to birth me, to raise me, to fight for me, and I know I have burned that same flame within me before. But I let a man lick his finger and thumb and snuff out the light within me.

Never again, Mother. I swear.