Promise You, Trust Me

They want you to tell them what they want to hear, but they don’t know what they want. In my life, I have made myself into many forms of woman to fit in, to get along, to be what men want, to be what women want, to do what they say and please as I had been taught to please. But I never like myself much for it. Not as much as I like myself when I do what I love, what I crave, what I desire, in spite of the judgment of everyone else. So now I do not beg. And now I do not chase. And now I do not need anyone to tell me what I’ve done is good enough. In this world, evil rises. Cruelty reigns over many a nation, climate, industry, air wave. I am not sure how I missed this, or how I ever believed anything else. Childhood, protection, institutionalization, privilege, innocence. I still remember the exact feeling of pulling a knee sock up my little leg, sheer virgin white with a thick elastic band at the top. Tight. Tight to keep it up, where it was supposed to be, strangling the small area where the calf met the knee. When I would remove the sock upon returning home from school, I could still see the ridges, the red indentations left in the skin in a circular band just below the knee. I don’t have words to share that people want to hear. I don’t have stories worthy of telling. But if they would want me to, I could turn myself into one. I could be any kind of story they want, I know how. I have done it ten thousand times before. It’s easy once you get the hang of it. You just remove your eyes. Peel off your skin. Cut off your hands and pick apart your heart into a few hundred tiny pieces. And eat them. Swallow them down so that it doesn’t hurt so bad to need the love they promised if only you could just behave.