my mothers wispy hair is light like clouds and smooth like waterfalls. it tickles the base of her neck and frames her full face. she is soft and kind.
my father is rough. his hair is messy of thorn bushes and graphite drawings. he is raspy and and his skin is greying. maybe it's from the beer.
they are quite different.
i think my disdain toward men comes from my father, because while i am afraid of insects, i am also terrified of fathers. their bruised hands which hold bark from burned trees seem to scrape my kneecaps and just underneath my eyelids. sometimes, it hurts.
maybe that's why i can write about unrequited love, because even non romantic love is also not reciprocated.
because while my mother blankets me in warm arms and sings me to sleep with harmonious laughter, my fathers gaze is sharp and scared.
checking in on me, curled up in beige room. fearful that if he doesn't call my name every 30 minutes, that i might just never answer.
i am hanging on a thin red line, made with crushed velvet. as i climb up, i am hiding from the suffocating grasp of fathers and toward being a blue jay in the sky. but if i fall, i am a mime who smiles, saying, "i love you," and "i miss you," because i am scared of being held tighter, forced to forget and forgive.
so, i often wonder to myself, which is better?
to stay shrunk inside my own skin, afraid to unzip the severed spine? or break away from the tinsel ties and say, "i can't love you because i can barely love myself! and it's all because of you! you, you, and you!"
mostly i am chained by a metal ball to sit in my own body. someday i wish to tell the truth.
