Symbolic Suffering

Lady like me

I thought I could hide it. I thought it wasn't obvious. I was just a lady, a lady with no feelings.

I didn't know they could see me, no less not think I was there.

If you fit in too well, you might as well be a ghost.

Keep good etiquette and follow the manners like instructions to assemble your life together.

Cut off your thoughts and thinking. You're just there for display, not to play.

They like it when you sit straight and keep your hands off the table. They love it when you say nothing and look away as if there's nothing left to say.

They won't notice you when you're choking on your silver spoon. They never think of you.

They'll only see you once the stench of rotting flesh fills the air and lingers on after scrubbing what once was you away.

They'll remember the smell you left after you were already dead.

You'll be referred to as the girl who stenched and not the lady with the utmost proper manners and best etiquette around a pond of illmannered frogs and toads shoving flies down their throats. Don't they know you're supposed to use a spoon and fork?

In whichever way they look back at you, they'll never remember a lady who had no impact on the world surrounding them. You never made them laugh, and you couldn't even crack. You were made of stone, and they were glass.

You wanted to be invisible but not completely see through. Your attempt at perfection failed and stumbled unless that was the plan, so no one would notice you until the end and further back into the future.

Either way, you withered away, and in the end, it took nothing but a single soup spoon to kill you.

I couldn't follow in your steps even though I tried my best, I still cracked. Turned out I, too, was made of glass, and it was possible to break me apart into little parts just like the rest of the creatures residing in the pond. I was a swan gliding over the water and not a lady with formality to the conformity.

I was seen, and I am remembered because I could see, and I expressed what I could feel through the eyes of an external being.