I can forget you

I think I can finally forget you. Every day I feel the distance increasing, the strength of your clutches weakening. Your seconds away from snapping away and I know it. Because I finally know myself.

I see her now, me. I see my own eyes, not yours. Yesterday, I didn’t look in the mirror and wonder if I could see your face emerging like a curse. I didn’t check if my eyes were dark and cold like yours. Instead, I saw warmth. They are a honey brown color. It’s nothing like yours. You were forever cold, with a paralyzing tunnel to hell in your eyes. I know that you wanted to freeze me there in the entrance way too.

You shot with me your empty stare of bullets, and I felt the memory of my stunned tears like a wound, never healing. Time wouldn’t change my story. Your face was money that I would bring up to compensate others for my mistakes. I would describe you, so they would shake too, and forgive me. Everything you did, with your mocking little smile, that smeared itself into my mind like blood, stung and stung and stung. You almost made yourself immortal in the memories you designed. I awoke with them each morning with them fanning through my mind, my fear ,your favorite playmate, never failing to prize my eyes open to your delusional world.

How you would have loved this…

Your other face would have lit up at the sight of me. Stars in your eyes as I cried. When I couldn’t get the grades, run the race, or go outside. When I was so angry, but I knew I couldn’t fight. Little girl against a man, you loved my frightened flight. Gave you the opportunity to slam up the stairs, smash open the door, scream out a war. And in this deadly dispute you could win all the matches you messed up in your memories, when no one ever cared enough to keep score.

I’m sorry you gave out your soul in your demands for attention. Your existence is like a funeral, and you seek out people to bury you and leave flowers at your grave. I’m afraid I’m going to forget you now. Nobody is going to be there.

I never thought I would escape. I swept myself back in daydreams, of your demise, at my hands. Just a girl on a bus to the other innocent passengers, not an inhabitant of the hotel of your nightmares, re-writing time, making them mine. What if I was a murderer? And I went mad, like you said I was? What if I went all the way, being yours, the crazy child that you were? And I lived, in total fear, of people seeing me as inferior, of not being mummy’s precious baby to everyone, who don’t really owe me anything…

But no, the world is not that scary.

I thought I would be stuck there, a statue portraying your ferocious strength. I would have been a pillar for you to rest against and admire, set up in your golden room. You painted every wall with your pain, and you never failed to color me, your daughter. You made me an extension of yourself; you made me into your misery. How pitiful. How small. Did you never grow? You must have curled up into a ball as a child and stayed there, never raising your head to the responsibility that comes with being alive. Your actions have consequences, you can’t just give them to your child. You can’t hit her in your place. You should have sent yourself over the ledge, not me. Nonetheless, I wish you well.

Yes me. I have deep red hair and it tumbles down my shoulders. My freckles are like constellations sparkling out before my eyes. I’m tall, taller than you could ever imagine. I look elegant.

Not that you could ever know, I’m someone so beautiful you could only try and darken me. Though there’s no point in it…

I’m heading for a spotlight so bright; I won’t see your shadows. You will be flailing about behind me, shouting words I will never hear. Sinking into the past. I won’t even see you leave.

This is goodbye.