for every woman i’ve ever known
Artwork: Angelina Tran | @gna.trn
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Content Warning: Domestic Abuse, Blood, Injury, Death, Violence
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my mother’s hands, protruding veins embroidered on aged skin
like roadmaps leading to nowhere
hands that have kneaded too much atta
hands that have held too many broken things
i watch them drown in the moonlight
and i can’t help but say
i want a life that is nothing like yours
i don’t want sacrifice
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and she recoils
retracts,
she says this is my choice
she runs on open, bloody wounds
toward a narrowing horizon
toward a sunset perpetually out of reach and says to me
“these are my choices don’t you ever look me in the eyes i gave you and have the courage
to pity me”
she says choice but how can i see choice
when i see her mother, her mother’s mother,
all the women in my family, all the women i have ever known
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i see the wounds they held closed with calloused hands
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i see the sewing of smiles into tired, weathered faces
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i see endless unreasonable compromises
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i see them standing in shallow graves
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i see them just being in the wrong place at the wrong time
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think of all the slit necks and all the blood spilt just so he could drink, just so he could see something red
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i see acid tears burning their hands that they made the mistake of crying into
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i see generations of frustration that she’ll only ever show through a single sigh
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my cousin calls with a split lip and with a joker-like smile, says “what? nothing happened?” and then she drowns in denial
and i’ll always ask why she stays and goes
through exhausting mess
people i know have left
for a lot less
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she said don’t you worry
i’ll drink the blood that they took
till it pours from my eyes
and maybe then you’ll realise that i don’t need help, i don’t need pity,
i’m doing just fine
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she’s free from him now — at least there’s that,
but she told me she can’t
help but miss the knife in her back
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i remember when a different cousin’s abuser died
she said it doesn’t matter
and that her jaw still clicks
and her mind plays tricks
when she sees him at night
and when someone’s touch makes her flinch
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i tell my mother i still pray
for a life nothing like theirs
and i know we’ll always disagree
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but she says instead you should pray to be
anything, anything like me.