Big Houses and Bigger Voids

It’s a big house

Spacious rooms, multiple floors

Just barely short of a mansion

Yet I feel suffocated

I guess the girl

A woman to be precise

Awarded recognition of an adult when convenient, and shamed into a child in demand of submission

Cannot be contained among these several walls

For the secrets crushing in between the walls

Manifest into a tip of perceivable numbness covering the berg of screams humming violently within her body

Her imploding silence a consequence 

Unrest running rampant throughout her body 

Truth and liberation go hand in hand

But what happens when truth lands you in a prison

Over and over again

Where you aren’t allowed privacy even in your own mind

Constant interrogations from wardens impatient to break into your brain 

Your rebellion evidence of pathology 

Your refusal of submission and erasure of identity a sign that there must be something wrong with you 

I guess I never really needed my own hands 

Or so I was taught 

It just needed to look like they were my own

And they told me it was my responsibility to do so

Especially so that other people would not find a speck of contamination in family reputation

It was my fault if others could see the hands on my wrists did not quite fit

The bigger houses were perhaps meant to appease the growth I wasn’t allowed to have 

After all, if you keep yourself small

Small spaces are meant to serve as luxuries

But if you have a voice

If you want to actually fill the voids 

Calling the spaces the suffocating black holes that they really are

You are just an ungrateful little brat 

Given everything that you could’ve wanted

A lazy ass who dare never take advantage

The girl, the woman the only one to be blamed for the soul sucking nature of her environment 

For the vampire nature of energy prey 

The walls

The spaces

Were Illusions of freedom I was never allowed to have 

Freedom,

Presented as something I could only have as long as I wasn’t allowed to leave 

As long as I bore the burdens of the chains around my body that prevented me from accessing my soul 

Adulthood and autonomy

Something I was only worthy of as long as I submitted to infantilization

Independence 

Something I only deserved if I didn’t question the pendulum that dangled in front of me

SAFETY AND LOVE written in big letters

Mind control scribbled miniscully and only noticeable to me when light filtered in through the blinds next to curtains draped over windows I was only allowed to observe from a distance but never allowed to peek behind 

The hypnotist hugging me tightly and swinging the chain faster and faster when he saw me trying to make out the tiny letters 

Chastising me for not trusting him when he was embracing me so dearly 

Lamenting that my body was rigid in his arms instead of pliant to his suggestions

The bruises from the past were an irrational concern, especially when there were riches and material safety to make up for it 

No matter that they still ached in varying degrees on pain

It wasn’t his fault that the invisible scars on my psyche plagued me greatly throughout my mind and body 

Because to him, they were punches of the past and after all–

I wasn’t dead

I was simply injured in the past, and so the damage was irrelevant

The evidence of the knives he left laying around 

Made me unreasonable and attacking

Even as my feet stayed bleeding

I was simply too sensitive for being cut by the blades at all,

It was my fault for believing them to be on my path even though he demanded I force myself to believe that they didn’t exist at all 

That he never carelessly littered them around simply because he didn’t remember even though I saw him do it

That he never hurt anyone so badly even though I experienced my own bleeding and the wounds that caused others to double over 

He beared witness that hundreds of swipes of the blade could never be so bad, especially if they were from him 

And of course when he said this he was the one whose hand was on the hilt 

How ungrateful was I to not trust him 

Irrational, unreasonable, illogical 

Shouldn’t I be grateful that I was alive after all?

That he didn’t do something worse 

That he still allowed me to live 

The self proclaimed gatekeeper of my life and existence 

A generous giver after all 

He said that I was my own person

Yet he boasted the title of someone who got to determine my personhood 

How laughable how men claim to give women rights

As if they are the gatekeepers of their rights in the first place

Safety and love 

My own good and well being supposedly within the collar and leash around my neck 

Always beware of gifts from those who claim support for your adventure and expansion 

For while the gifts may be glisten prettily of gold 

The giver expects you to pretend the shiny necklace isn’t a collar 

Carrying an invisible chain to their desires 

They will only allow you expand as far as they will allow

And only by their permission 

And if I choked and died then that was by my own doing 

Ungrateful 

The more I screamed to find my own hands 

The more my own my voice became

The louder my soul became a threat 

Unrecognizable yet familiar

Forgotten yet remembered

Fighting through the airways in my throat and lungs and stomach

The more separable my became from them 

The more I released years long suppressed battle Cries for the right to build my own house 

Even if it was smaller than theirs

Even if its wisdoms were different hues from the colors their years greater than mine honed and beared

At least I would still have my own hands

At least my neck would be free from a collar around its neck

At least love would be defined by freedom instead of restriction

Any convenience in relationships would be borne out of will and want instead of suffocating obligation that required my own soul’s death

And any obligation would be consciously followed rather than oppressively expected

In that big almost mansioned house

The tighter their hands pulled me close the more they claimed to love me 

And if they pulled tighter then I couldn’t breathe, let alone speak

Death was a justifiable excuse as long as they were in the driver’s seat

As long as my body still functioned 

As long as I moved in ways where I served as a vessel, a satisfying trophy of their American dreams on the bookshelf in their offices and living rooms where everyone could see 

Death would be okay 

As long as my face was visible in the windshields of the cars they drove, a symbol of their honor 

So that they could parade the homes that they built 

Even as they strayed far from it to be visible on the streets 

The greater the crowds

The greater the quantity of the praises,

The bolder laudings the better

But they would never know until it was too late–

Cars crash when the driver isn’t paying attention

Especially when she is expected to drive the car but is never allowed to take driving lessons

And also when she was taught she’d never need her own hands 

Because then her own hands feel unfamiliar and she doesn’t know how to use them 

At the end of the day, corpses cannot drive

No matter how much you dress them up 

Even if you offer her designer bags 

The most expensive you can find

And try to lure her in with luxury and dollar signs

Her soul will be nowhere to be found

Dust replacing the woman she was meant to be 

Only if her hands were her own hands

What kind of woman would she be?

But the things about light 

Is that it will continue to exist even if blinds and curtains try to keep it out 

And the thing about souls 

Is that they can never cease to exist 

Even if their owners are gatekept from it 

Souls are meant to flow and expand in nature

For her it was inevitable that she would escape the large house in lieu of the universe, in pursuit of the Divine 

Even if that meant that warmth would have to be sought across cold nights

And that she would have to trudge along dense woods barefoot under hot summer suns to find water 

Instead of sinking into the comfort of having luxury served to her on a silver, sometimes gold platter with a platinum collar around her

With her soul, she craved the earth’s grasses 

The sun the moon and stars

Blue skies lit bright and littered abundantly with clouds on some days, clear and open on others

Rain refreshing on some days and overwhelming on others showering her roughly and gently 

Bathed in her soul, uncapping the shame 

She preferred the wilderness in comparison to the banality of the four mansionlike walls 

That were all of the same colorlessness that demanding her merging and conformity while bragging bright shades to others 

It’s not that she didn’t crave color

She just wanted to be the architect of her own hues 

She wanted to immerse in the colors herself 

She wanted to transcend, experience and be 

She wanted to be more than a mere performance for someone else’s show

She never wanted to abandon her soul

She simply wanted to let it glow 

Her soul was always her own 

Whether she realized it or not 

And no matter the barriers other people felt entitled to in putting between her and herself 

Even if they covered my human eyes away from my soul

My soul begged to be released 

And seeped through their oppressive hands, slowly but surely 

And faster and faster over time