I waited for you to act.
I thought that I had lost all my faculties.
We’d suffer from the same source and yet we were
So detached from each other.
Couldn’t listen to our own voices.
Hurt each other even more.
There hadn’t been anyone to tell us what to say
And refuse. How to pack our bags and lift our
Middle fingers. All we saw were tears running down a drain,
Make-up reapplied to compose a tortured smile.
And all’s well, all’s well, all’s well, the female lie in your face,
Falling out of your mouth against nature.
I’d look at you and despair. We both knew the mechanisms
Of his body well. We’d both ask ourselves why he felt so
Empowered to act like he did. We never understood our part
In it, the inherited roles and dynamics, we’d never grasp what
Lingered inside of us, the language that could checkmate,
The voice that could eradicate wastelands, the arms lifted
To protect, the legs ready to run, our bodies standing their ground.
Who told us to blindly trust our ancestors?
The ones who turned a blind eye on rotten behaviours?
The ones who tolerated violence, mind games and oppression?
I won’t be raised by the past, I choose the dead that teach me.
Why give birth to me if the old unholy patterns are merely repeated?
So that everybody could have a shot at screwing things up?
You’d give me bandages for a bleeding heart,
Soaked after an instant, you knew it wouldn’t last,
You knew he’d lose control again, you accepted it with old age,
In your young body, you resigned to a world that he manufactured
For you and I’d run around with scissors instead cutting
The ties that originated from him to infiltrate my body and mind,
And you’d stare at me as if I had betrayed your whole universe
And you know what?
I did and I had to.
I had never seen your eyes more open.
Croque-Melpomene 