To You, Miserable Woman

Hey beautiful! How ru doing? Came across this pic… miss u girl!

"You again."

Is how I want to reply

To a screen now lit with these unwelcome words.

Instead, an old familiar growl

Is stirred with a spoon inside my chest. By my own white knuckled grip, I muse in artful disgust.

Despite myself, I am unable to tear my gaze away

Ensnared by the luminescent message that swirls before me.

Just put it down, says a voice I know I should heed.

But this taste... So delicious. So burning.

It grabs hold and shakes half-healed anger. Embers I’ve tried and tried to just

Let

Die.

But they never drown. I could scratch the itch amidst clawing, I could hiccup and leech my heart of salty tears. But truth is always waiting there.

She hurt you. She hates you. She's jealous of you. And She will never understand how her love is overlapped in so much pain. She will always want you in her life, yet she will always destroy you when she gets the chance.

So I hug myself with tired arms and oversteep in it all. I grow bitter, full of taste yet tasteless, until again

That smile arrives.

Cracked, like Hyde, my thoughts curl

Bent, hooked, and wicked.

I could smite you where you stand, woman.

I could draw your own sword against you,

Charge you with the same stripping words,

That you once pointed against me…

At lease then their aim would be true.

But I stop myself, I smother the ugly spark.

Please, don't. I cannot step into the old well.

I cannot dive into shallow waters.

For what? A- a- a wasted shot of ammo? To give back a just injury-

That she would never truly feel- never look down into bleeding palms and

Know

That her pain was deserved

was earned.

No. You know her too much.

If you weren't painted into the original villain

She would instead wave back amiably in reply,

Amnesic to the ocean of years lying burned and gone

From the match that she threw.

But there I see her, lying on a blasted, sinking, ship amidst waves that crash all about her.

It’s hull, stabbed and clawed and ripped by sleeping hands.

But now! Awake! See her stand, watch her rise believing all to be fair.

What a faulty display of innocence.

She does not see the gulping ocean,

That gladly drinks her vessel down.

She cannot sense the blood that drips

From the blade she carries.

That still cuts through what I tell myself is weathered skin.

How easy it would be to confront the smiling lie of a woman and address the never-dying Why.

But she does not see. She cannot.

My Hurt sloshes and mixes in slurries on the deck.

Drenched herself, she recognizes it now to just be her pigmentation.

Simply her flesh, raw and crying; not her sins as having come to stain her.

She remembers nothing of her own piercing words. She couldn’t.

Or she would have realized that she was already dead.

That behind her eyes sparked emptiness. Behind her grin sung nothing.

Now, holding her message, my calloused palms burn

Until all of me is quickly engulfed by a flame that I do not admire.

I have a right to feel anger. After everything, I have the right to-

And yet-

I cannot relish in the opportunity offered up before me.

It's too easy.

She reaches out with smiles, but how- How can I convict someone for crimes

in which she ceases to recall the victim.

But she is still forever vicious. Even if she forgets.

She could skin our spirit with one hand

and stab you in the back with the other,

all the while cooing, "Why are you crying?"

Then laughing, No. Wrenching. Really, Twisting the blade deeper,

Why are you crying?

But again I am wrong. There was no cooing. Not during her torture.

That was my family’s other favorite empress:

The Rotten Queen. But that is for another day. Another dribble. I admit I am guilty of sometimes combining the two villains of my story.

So... no. Our second matriarch spat wrath

and poison

and she meant it.

She screamed while she cut you down. Not after.

Image, Dreams, and Self alike, she would shred to pieces

And then rush the blade through.

It was only after twisting it round, then up, would she pull out the serrated instrument

that should have been a mercy, but only tore you apart further, and you simply had to watch

as your tears, forgiveness, blood, and pardon all

pooled out helplessly around you.

Almost beautifully.

Almost.

But there were no apologies for her bouts of rage.

No bandages, because why would anyone need healing when no one was injured to begin with.

What knife? What words?

Clearly you misunderstood.

But now I am older, and sadly wiser, and I know I understood then.

Just as I do now.

Some battles are not worth starting

Just as some battles are not worth finishing

Even if

You know

You know you know you know

That you will win.

I will cast away my gaze, though she will still come calling across the roaring seas with banners flying,

“Hey, beautiful.”

Asking me to take her hand, but offering me a dripping palm.

Old blood, our bloods, the ink of old treatises, and the stains of their ash when they were inevitably burned all mixes into one waste.

She still fails to see it slip back and forth along her ship.

And in time the world’s grace will soon expire

Yet she will still open innocent eyes my way.

Empty, blank, and false they are, those things that rest atop

A brilliant smile. How equally ridiculous to watch

As the red truth runs out wide around her.

I know you, miserable woman.

But let her beam and glow my way, I will not faithfully step

onto waters I know she cannot help me stand in.

She may hope and wish and beg and pray

As I once did.

For a mother...

But I will stay behind the ebbing tides that lick and curl eagerly

around my shackled stance, wishing me to start a fire,

willing me to bring her down so the both of us can suffer.

Instead I will nurse the misshapen scars and rot of Doubt that riddles my strained tone.

And They will see me then.

The Ones that wished to see nothing but

my daily smile and sweetest greetings.

They will meet an older face They do not recognize.

Stern, cold, and glaring on the shore

They will watch me fold the bitter set

Of harsh words left unsaid back into a pocket.

And I, without regret, will cast away my glance

And turn from her tidings... Or are they cries.

The Watchers will point to the dark horizon, to her torn sails of pitch,

shouting, and hailing questions, begging,

"She’s helpless! She’s drowning!"

To which I will simply say,

Well.

So was I.

Then I will close my argument with a solemn step.

Away, far, making my own path to follow.

Tired but determined, to walk the night through.

They will curse and wail and scorn my parting from the shore.

They will ignore my sopping, shivering frame,

And tell me that I don't understand,

While they themselves, stand huddled, but dry.

They will overlook my exhausted, heaving chest, and instead condemn me alongside all the others who choose

To exhale. To breathe life back in again.

And let the past go.

They will then forget me. They will forget and go follow the louder noise of the woman.

She still does not realize that I am

Growing smaller in her horizons.

Or that it is my blood that sloshes along the boards

Which she so firmly stands on.

She does not remember my pleas to her amongst the waves that once crashed around us both. Before I was forced to save myself.

I tried to use my voice, my siren song,

To draw her away from her own hatred that crashed all about us.

She would not follow me to the drier land.

She held on, lunged and struck the heart that still bleeds when I was the one who had tried

I tried I tried to help her. To love her.

It is my soul she still stands in, as she murders herself with smiles.

To drink from the salty waves has always meant death,

As to take her back now would make myself an anchor to her broken oars,

And surely, if she did not kill me first then, I would remember

How she had tried.

And I would sink us both down.

To attempt to break past that churning bar...

To return to a storm that cannot break for me...

No. Better leave it all to the waters there. Better leave her.

My eyes are tired. I am tired. The familiar growl sits stale inside my chest.

Maybe that’s what’s still decaying there,

Where a trusting heart should be.

The waters, though, the waters have biting cold and wrath enough.

And all their own.

I will simply walk on, and keep walking. Away. And far.

Let it be her own self-hatred

That beats her in quiet retribution.

My silence, Woman, and your waves

Will all be answer enough.