you tell me that everything about me is wrong
you look at me
and only see yourself
that was the whole point
to put yourself into me
bury the child
and complain about who you’ve not become
and I incorporated your half-lives
*
I learned all your buttons by heart
I’d never push
because I understood as a girl
that your killer instinct would not hesitate
that you are a secret keeper
that we have an understanding
you and I
and that I keep your secrets
violence that lives out in the open
where silence counts as consent
where intimidation counts as an agreement
a coming together of likeminded temperaments
I comprehended that I was born on thin ice
and carried the weight of men on my shoulders
*
women got hunchbacks from their submission and fears
their bitter self-condemnatory whispers
and plagued resigned bodies
adapting their forms and postures to the violence of men
watching them extract what they needed and wanted
from daughters and wives alike
men who packed their worst selves into a neat package
declaring to the world
I’m in order
I don’t have a past
men who erupt and let loose behind closed doors
their worst selves live at home
where they are their own bosses
*
who are these men who’d kill me if I said the wrong thing
*
silence and I never got along
*
in a house on fire you’re likely to scream
and they convinced me that screaming for my life
meant screaming for my death
and that fire was just fire
masters of distraction
and that I was the fatal match
*
you conveyed to me that I deserved men’s worst selves
men’s hidden swollen selves
and I anticipated who they needed me to be
in order for me to survive
Croque-Melpomene 