traces

This is Girl speaking. I had to get my feelings out somewhere, no matter how tired I might be of thinking, so I wrote this text. It has not been proofread and it is past midnight, so please do not come for me if it is lacking in quality.

Sometimes having something to say is enough and more important than how it is said. And some things are so brutal that you cannot put them eloquently. 

"Lately the girl has been laying in a bed which no longer feels like her own. It hasn’t for some time now. Not since she moved out and embarked on a journey, going from slurping a sweetened milkshake colored in pastel to sipping a vodka cranberry deprived of its fruit. Embracing womanhood, still stained by girlhood, painted fingers unwashed. 

Little did she know that she would long to be a child again, to have a bed be hers and hers only. Tucked in, head resting on a tower of plushed friends, and choosing whether she felt like wearing a pajama, a t-shirt or nothing at all. She would be just as clean regardless. Foolish child. She thought it would stay that way forever, a place of familiarity to return to for every night to come. To not fear a sunset, because the dark had nothing to hide. To not dread a sunrise, because she was not hiding in the dark. 

But now, she knows the beds of both respected higher-ups and outcasted underdogs. She can feel the heat of a window-shut room and the sweat of a body too close, as well as the cold of a bare face pressed against the wall, having nothing to cover up her lasting dignity. And for each bed, there is a trace of her, of her unborn daughter’s fingertips and of all she had sworn to shield.

There are traces on her too, from hands which also played with paint once. Blue, red, green and yellow. All over her cheeks. Her neck. Her chest. Her waist. Her…. 

She wants to erase it. Wash up every sheet. Air out any pillow. Scrub the entirety of her until there is nothing left. Be eliminated from any mind, return to oblivion, what was before her very birth. And then leave without a trace. Be traceless. 

But she knows it is too late. The harm has already been done. No scrubbing can undo it. And nothing can bring her bed back to her because someone else has now laid in it. A boy she would have ran from at the playground when she was younger. But she is grown now, and she was never taught how to run in heels.  

She sits up, unsure what time it is as she constantly lives in darkness now. She also cannot tell if she is wearing anything or not. The only source of light, is her computer screen, a text she wrote in a drowsy state. 

3829 words. 

That is what was needed for her to say what it means to have no words matter at all. 

And even then, they are to be put on trial, questioned over and over and over again. 

And she will have to fight to be heard, over and over and over again. 

It is just too much for a girl to bear, so no woman will await her, no woman will she grow into.  

She lays her head back down, on a tower of laughters forever lost and premature bodies never found. And she tucks herself in the shame of knowing that since her vocal cords have been cut, there will be more just like her. A fatal virus spreading. There is no cure.

And so, playgrounds will forever be infected. The paint children play with will never be pure, never be clean. There will be traces of her in it. Of every girl who has been silenced, beaten and still tried to run. 

Of the very first girl who felt the weight of a man’s body, in a bed once hers."