Faultline Girl

First, salt the doorway.

Even ghosts need to know you’re not taking visitors.

***

Second, name your rage something pretty.

Call it “Juniper.”

Call it “My Mother Taught Me Better.”

Shelve its name to hold the house.

Braid its hair. Feed it meals you skipped.

Let it sleep beneath the pillow

with a knife and rosaries dusted in cocaine.

***

Do not mistake softness for surrender.

Or confuse silence with consent.

Do not let the memory sit too long in one position—

it will cramp,

and then it will scream

and every woman you've ever been will answer.

***

You weren’t built to be lovely.

You were built like a psalm with a cracked jaw,

its hallelujah curtsying

like a ballroom in a war zone.

You dance anyway.

You blister the marble.

***

There were days the mirror wouldn’t look at you.

There were nights your own body

felt like a stray animal you’d rescued

but couldn’t trust.

***

Some nights,

you opened your skin like a music box,

just to let something sing.

The tune was acid and lilac—

it hummed like it missed you

and didn’t forgive you.

***

You learned to sleep with one eye open.

To love with one hand on the exit wound.

To laugh

because if you didn’t

you’d set the entire goddamn world on fire

and then apologize for the mess.

***

Still,

you stitched together joy

with eyelash glue and old recital ribbons.

Still,

you reached for the world again

when leaving was easier.

***

You stand in the back of the church,

mouth full of hymns

and no patience for saviors.

You are not a sympathy script.

You are not curated pain in pastel filters.

***

Your sadness wears heels now.

It makes eye contact.

It tips in cash.

It holds the door open

for the next girl coming in

dragging her story like a bag of broken glass.

***

And you say,

“I know.

Me too.

I made it out—

but I left the door cracked,

and the house full of matches,

in case you need the fire to see your way.”