hostage

when someone tells me to smile for a picture it feels like the camera is a gun. like their words are knives threatening to pluck at my neck and the butcher is disguised as a photographer. so with an animalistic fear I look around with my teeth out, lips spread, humming and buzzing like a fridge begging to be unplugged.

“like this?” I grit through my teeth.

“no.” they sigh with only their eyes, sneer cheese and snap the photograph.

I am doing it wrong again. I am looking around for you to tell me I am a good girl when the room fades to black and the stagehands pull your chair from under you and suddenly we are in the front yard in 1999 and you are telling me how life is.

You tell me with a smile that boys are just biologically better than girls, but that isn’t my fault. You say I can do my part by being a good girl. I can listen. I can smile. I can take care of boys. I can never complain. I can always be modest. I can speak when spoken to. That God will reward me for the things I do that go unspoken. I guess that is why I am told to stay quiet.

Before I can respond the yard is flooded with lake water and I still can’t swim. I can barely doggy paddle. It wasn’t important for me to learn to swim because a man would always be there to protect me.

Well mama, where is he? I am pretty, I am lovely and I can’t say no.
Why did i fill up to the brim with water?

(I don’t need an answer now. I drained the lake myself. I have all the power you said belonged to men. I have more.)