Sunday brunches, French presses, gardening, and tiny desk concerts –
I’d always wished would be enough to
save me from the imparted cruelty inside.
Oh, I want simple pleasures that require no self-sacrifice;
tiny joys that only desire to be enjoyed.
But I am determined to life every rock,
peer into the earth, question pleasure and
call it undisciplined.
I inherited this doubt honesty.
I came into this casually.
My mother sharpens her tongue against my spine.
My backbone: a tool.
I am always retreating to floral pink wallpapered rooms.
So, it is no surprise to me when silence creeps into my chest
and tightens itself around my lungs to whisper its viciousness.
The sound of disapproval: a validation that I exist.
I close my eyes and I am engulfed in pink.
A door opens and my heart sinks.
I do not like your heavy footsteps
and deep sighs.
I do not say, “You are making me feel afraid.”
I ask if you are angry with me.
Did I offend you?
Did I leave a pink floral train that is only meant to exist
behind a closed door?
It is not love that rolls its eyes back at me,
that scoffs with irritability at the straight back I lack,
but it is safe.
So Safe.
So very safe.
A pink floral wallpapered room of its own I know so intimately.
What is the comfort of safe without the recognition of fear?