Something like prose.
non-lyrical scribbles.
1
Dress rehearsalsMy Mother got married in this dress. It’s her wedding dress. She did not get to enjoy it, and neither did I.
One day, I noticed that the dress started to wither (as though it knew about closing chapters). It is hard to watch symbols decay.
My mother is majestic. She’s art. Her feet float off the earth and touch the sky with an electric and ferocious intensity. She is art that is wool and bubble-wrapped in a body that unknowingly signed a contract to say that togetherness will be always feel lonely.
Her big day arrived. Her dress was magical and glistening and soft. It exuded promise, comfort and ‘treat-me-with-care’. It inspired the gasping joy of the ‘ooohs’ and ‘ahhhhs’.The ‘it fits like a glove’ and the ‘look at its train!’.
The rays sunk and the afternoon witnessed the blossoming of this dress, it blessed it, and lent its sun to kiss it goodbye. The dress did, indeed, glide over her like a glove. It became hot. Itchy. Unkind. Harsh. It became suffocating, telling of times to come. The glove became padded, parrying. The train got stuck. The lace peeled. Until removing it felt like the most intense grief wrapped into the loudest sigh of relief. She was, again, alone with it and alone without it.
By the night, it’s hanging. It wants to hang heavier, to have its fabric feel lengthy and magnificent and expansive again.
Like it wanted to make good art.
Though, it did make a splendid handkerchief. It unapologetically soaked up all of the stories that had been projected onto it as a fundamental truth. Polyester and its fabulous moisture wicking properties- it hid her tears well, but it could only soak so much.
It tumbled from grace because it couldn’t be what was expected of it. Though the dress was so complete without the demands on it- demands that it doesn’t crinkle, itch, move, drag. The demand that it stays on the pedestal, that it doesn’t breathe, that it doesn’t make a sound, that it doesn’t require change or thought, that it doesn’t stain, or ever sit differently to when it first slid on-like a glove. My mother did not like that dresses were asked to be gloves.
This is my mother’s grace.
It’s in it that she wore her heart on her lace sleeve and gave it to the tin man. She didn’t know better then. And she wasn’t supposed to. She entrusted me with what was left of it, and I promised her to fix it if I ever found myself feeling the same in it.
And so I did.
I held her hands in mine and sealed my pledge within our grasp. She zipped up the dress for me and we wiped each others’ tears instead. We stilled our hearts and swaying feet and immortalised it into art.
2
Enchantment and sacrilegeIt starts with a look.
Once you’ve been seen like this, and once you have felt what it’s like to be seen like this, once you have reverberated with the magnitude of what it’s like to feel seen like this, to matter,
to be enamored by,
to be completely obsessed with you.
Eyes on you.
Heart absorbs you.
Folds of the brain like phyllo dough buttered by layers of more of you.
While you… well, you are completely obsessed with belonging. Contorting your being and holding your breath-to just make it fit.
Them-obsessed with your adoring eyes which serve as a wonderful mirror to continue their illusion of moral purity. They become obsessed with owning the mirror.
Once you are seen like this, you will do everything in your power to remain seen like. You will do everything in your power to be seen like this again and again and again...
You will do anything for your image to be restored with reverence in those eyes. To be dusted off and returned to the top of the mantle as the one worthy of kindness, worthy of being idolized, worthy of being loved.
You will do anything in your power to be restored, even when you’re not guilty.
You shed layer after layer of your self, peel off anything that makes you you, scrub your skin so hard that you erase the smell of you. Wrap your arms around your face, scream silently into your elbow- desperately attempting to summon the strength you need to be mute.
Then maybe the shell of you can earn that nod of worthiness
..of the ‘good girl’
…of ‘I am pleased with you’.
Even though you yanked that heart of yours out of your chest, squished it beneath you as you land heavily with each repeated fall from grace.
Even though you abandoned its loud calling, covered your ears to escape its needy thud-thud-thud-THUD…
Hearts can’t live in porcelain dolls.
You hope that being restored will satisfy the pathological craving to be seen in purity. That maybe the hot tears will burn the sin off you and maybe the desperate pleas can earn you mercy.
But this is the trap of the love that teaches you to earn it. The trap of the moment your eyes meet, and you are convinced that your heart has found it’s home.
We were never talk to ask, but what was that home? We should.
This is the trap of perceiving your lovability through another’s eyes. The acquired addiction to the look of adoration for what you can be shaped to become-not who you are. And the explosive speed beneath your feet as you run the never ending race to make yourself exactly that.
To make you the dream.
The purest.
The smartest.
The most polished trophy.
The most immaculate and hollow woman-shaped ceramic object to be admired for its resilience to shattering, for its translucence, for its bright white face and painted on lips.
Never mind if you are actually a sunflower.
One day, I let it all dry up and shatter. It was the day my sister called me her guiding light and I looked through her eyes for a moment. That day, I held her hand and my mama’s hand and we walked ourselves off the mantle. You think you don’t belong with the seeds but you do. It’s a long walk down and you’ll be okay if you crash. When porcelain breaks it has to be replaced. When it cracks under pressure, they call it crazing. Let yourself craze, and may you never be the same again.
Mama, you were always perfect.
