the slaps stop coming when you turn 16.
you are too old to be beat up, she says. you all have a laugh about it at dinner. she says: i cant help it if you dont do your work anymore, you're on your own
you are not. she just doesnt beat you.
the first time she ignores you when shes mad at you, it lasts for two days. she hugs you in the kitchen, cries with you. she tells you: i'm sorry, i wont do it again. i'm sorry, it won't happen again.
she doesnt say sorry. she does just that once though.
she doesnt keep her promise.
she's ignored you for weeks straight. sometimes a whole month. sometimes it's been your father, then your mother, then your father and then your mother simultaneously. sometimes you think you're imagining it, that it isnt your life you're looking back on but someone else's.
sometimes you sneak into the bathroom, it's been a month since shes looked at you properly, a year since shes talked to you like a mother would. you fold a hand over your mouth and sob. you miss your mother, you miss when you got beat up. you miss laughing with her, miss having the energy to talk to her about so many things and nothing at all. you'll take that over this, you'll take the physicality of hurt over this. it feels like your whole body is charred by needles,
it feels like you're going to die if you breathe again.
you fold a palm over your mouth and sob until you are feverish with tears, and yet you never run out of them.
you are sixteen. there is too much world and so much you haven't seen yet.
you are sixteen, you look into the mirror. you are exhausted, you drop your hands. there is too much world, and you'd rather die than wait for the day you can see it.
