I tasted my own braid in my throat.
You urged me to be satisfied.
My voice split in two, distorted, drying out,
You wanted to hear yourself talk amidst my silence.
You never liked what I had to say, what I saw, you do.
You separated us. We were born into a different world.
You penetrated our world with wars and hammers
And relentless chicanery. I hear your words when I eat.
You’re indigestible. I don’t want to swallow and internalise your voice.
Make it part of myself. It doesn’t belong here.
Can I even say no? I owe you my life.
Every bite, every taste, from me to you, is yours,
I was born indebted to you.
Since I could breathe you took from me.
Without asking. You imposed. And I learned.
I was alive in your house and you’d made all the sacrifices.
You’d never let me forget.
You denied the existence of monsters yet you kept growing.
If you have ever been someone that I could relate to,
We were not alive at the same time.
Maybe at one point, we would have made sense, together,
And then everything was too late.
Something didn’t survive.
Something was overpowering, misdirected.
I became a daughter, rejected, neglected.
You called me ugly before you confessed your love to me,
And it has always felt like a sin, like a lie, that you told yourself
To counteract your fear of death.
Croque-Melpomene 