Content warning: endometriosis, infertility

​
                                               Day 7: Follicular and the Good

Rose is not late for work. She never is. She eagerly awakes early every morning to leave
ahead of her shift, allowing her enough time to take in the city sights. She couldn’t help
feeling overcome with pride at the realisation she was living in London. This meant that
during her short walk to work she would sometimes stop to admire the city in complete awe.
The large city life ironically allowed her small moments of public aloneness. She cherished
those solitary walks which somehow felt so peaceful despite the loudness of her urban
surroundings. She checks her bag, like she always does, lunch (carrots sticks, homemade
hummus, wholemeal crackers, red apple and one square of dark chocolate) check,
comfortable white shoes, check, and her emergency kit she would not need but would never
dare leave without, check. Rose is in great spirits today. She is aware, although short, this is
her window to shine. Soon she would be at work, and alone she would be no more.

                                                                      ***

Rose who is private by nature, was brought into the world in complete drama. Her mother,
Marigold, unexpectedly went into labour at her aunt’s Flo’s fourth wedding. The ambulance
just about arrived in time, but not without causing a scene. Aunt Flo, at 80 years old,
impressively chased the ambulance waving a fist of anger in the air. How could Marigold be
so attention-seeking? Wasn’t a wedding a once-in-a-lifetime event, or only four-times-in-
your-life event?

My body forgives me
for everything
for dancing backwards in the mirror
like my hips have hinges
love it to death
and now I am scared

The curves of my nonexistent hips
and no waist
say
I am a man
help me
treat him kindly
let him lean into me instead of pushing him away

A Dining Table
Naguilian Road, Baguio City,
Philippines
May 30th, 2022

Hi Mom,

For the longest time, I believed that you did not love me. I trusted the idea that you did not love me. I
mean, how could you? I’m an eldest child riddled with mental illness and a prickly personality robbed of
a spine. Who could love such a disappointment? And like all unchecked cancers, it festered and ate me
alive until I was a walking corpse.

Plus, I didn’t know if I loved you either. You always seem angry toward me and my siblings. And to me,
it felt like you were so indifferent to us. You let us get beaten on the street, heckled, and punished for the
tiniest of reasons. How could any child love a mother as cruel as that?

It took me a long time to forgive you for not being able to protect me. I was hurt, and I was in pain. And
for the longest time, I made sure I was protecting you. I knew your heart would never be able to handle
knowing what those men did to me. I never regretted my decision, but I resented you for it.

I was angry. And was very scared. Attachments come usually flushed with longing and fluorescent with
pain. And I know I’m arrogant when I say I’ve endured a lifetime’s worth of suffering to justify my fear
and mistrust. You’ve never protected me when it counted.
​
And yet, like the patient mother that you are, you coaxed yet another one of your eldest children to step
into the light. You managed to pry my stubborn heart open. And I wasn’t the only one. Beyond the salvo
of your own cancers, your children started to paint you in a vibrant, unmissable, shade of pink.

Trigger warning: mentions of sexual assault and death

​
There is a way I would want to kill you that even I cannot fully articulate. What I do know is you must beg for mercy, I will bask in your tears as you wish for a kinder, faster death. I will kill you so horridly that it shocks even my person.  I want you to die. Because you have killed me.

Where I'm from, they say it takes smoke to start a fire. So for posterity's sake, you will know why.  You will know why I have killed a man and why I have no regrets.

​
                                                                                          1.
I am listening to cigarettes out the window the afternoon I decide to write this. The song,  a sad dreary tune. There's a main girl and she's depressed, finding comfort in her cigarettes, wishing for a change. We'll find moonlit nights strangely empty because when you call my name through them there'll be no answer. I have always been one for the extremes, when I am hurting I listen to music that breaks me because it makes me hurt harder. You could call it masochism, I quite believe it's part of life's little gems. I have always felt things so intensely, so passionately, it'd keep me up all night. I talk about the things I love and appreciate the things I believe in with as much fervor as my heart can muster. I used to love that one thing about me and now I hate it because I remember and feel everything you did to me. That is all I think about now. I cry almost everyday after that meeting, or laugh whenever I recall how obscenely cruel they were to me. How you probably knew you were going to win because you are a man and I am a woman.

​Boys don’t like
            girls stronger than them.
Don’t let the muscles show
            through the skin.
Keep those where you need them, inside,
because one day
there will be a baby in there.

Girls with no hair
lion manes and horse tails, the animalistic softness
that calls a man to her fur
and makes him wrap his hands in it
            bury his face in it
                        let it (uh) sink in.

I’m fourteen. It is an ailment to be such- one that people refuse to acknowledge, scoff at, disavow, but I
beg for your trust when I say that it is existent, for it is tangible. I sense it in the aches of my chest, in the
sting of my puffy eyes, in the fatigued tremble of my anxious hands. I wish nothing more than to be able
to will it away- shun it from my mind, my body, my soul and everything it encompasses. Lock it away
from my fond memories it is seeking to taint and squeeze in its hands- those that desire to destroy all that
I cherish.

It is true that it is no monumental moment in one’s life. It is not a milestone you will photograph and tape
inside your closet- not on the walls, no, for you are too ashamed to display the unsightly kid you so hated
to whomever will pass by- for you to brush your fingers gently over and revisit as the years blur by. And
yet, I know with a certainty akin to the fire in my heart- the very same that is gradually dwindling in the
shower of my sorrows- that it is one I will remember.

Indisputably, I will recall those days I spent in the confines of my own grief- for the death of my own self,
of the child buried deep inside, the one that is too afraid of the darkness to even try and search for the
light. Those same days when I realized that I am a child, but that will change, and change- change is the
thing that ruins us all. How must I face it when I do not even know who I am to begin with?

​If you open me like a Russian nesting doll and leave my core vulnerable, what- or whom is it that you will
see in its center? Would it be perceptible, or would it be a shapeless, abstract figure, seemingly ready to
burst into something more. Would you see a child, who yearns most to be one, and yet is imprisoned in
their mind that knows much more than they should? Who swore off their innocence long ago- kept in a
faraway land you could no longer reach, the world you once saw in rose-tinted glasses, filled to the brim
with juvenile jubilation and youthful negligence.

Fundamentally, biologically, socially- and to everyone else, I am a child. I wear frilly dresses with
rainbow colours, and I play tea with my friends. I study and know nothing about taxes or work, or any of
the other “real and valid problems” that adults face. I do not hear my parents arguing next door, and I do
not know of their plans of divorce. I do not know much of anything, really- simply because I am a child.
​
False, false, false.

Neither do I belong to those fetters of fragility
furled around my feet, nor do I belong
to the shallowly strength depicted
by utter superficiality;

I am the daughter of clay,
and of callosity,

crafted with the competence
of being fragile and fortitudinous
all at once.

We find her by the river, clad in nothing but her blood-dark cloak.
            One of our husbands, a hunter. He carries her through stones and trees. He walks to the
end of the village, watched from behind bamboo windows.
            The mother does not weep when she meets his eyes. She does not even speak. This is a
fear we all know. This is one of many fates.
            We whisper amongst ourselves. We wonder if she is alive, if she wants to be. We know
what happened. None of us dare name it.
            It is Sunday, the Lord’s day, when she first returns, dressed in her blood-red cloak. She
gazes upon us with moon-bright eyes, winnowing basket in hand. One of us thinks back to when
she was young, when her eldest sister looked at her in that way, too. I’m still here.
            Some of us go home and teach our girls how to twist and rip and mend again, the cotton
cloth slick against our hands. Some of us climb small trees in search of fruit, ignoring the cuts.
            At the river, we soak dresses and talk about all the ways a woman can fail. “This is what
happens when you don’t guard your daughters.” We wring them dry, scrub them almost angrily.
A new day, the same sun, another question—repetitive, like a prayer.
            “What do you think,” someone says, “drove him to such an act?” We scratch our fingers
against the dirt, purse our lips as the water runs across our wounds. One of us washes slippers. If
it were my daughter, she thinks​​--
            She would have been safe.

​I.
Here we go again:
pull down the cloth which reveals the river
that flows spastically and stains
everything it touches.
Open the wrapper (the right way),
place the plastic properly
between your fingers.

​the game we came back to most was
family; you be the mom I’ll be the dad
who wants to play
the baby.

and sometimes you had to be the mom
when there wasnt another choice.

but a woman in a painting poised like a fruit rotting on a tree
taught me that I don’t want to have kids anymore,

not if it means I’ll rot away inside after
when I’ve served my
purpose.

Getting mascara on your eyelid.

Smudging your nail polish because it takes too long to dry.

Not knowing how to receive compliments.

Knowing how to give them.

Allowing yourself to be girly in a way that isn’t ironic or making fun.

Allowing yourself to not be girly, not just to be different.

​Midday it was when by the kitchen stove,
Your senseless body lay upon the floor.
"Her water broke!", Pa cried, took you and drove,
I gaped bewildered, I was only four.
At first, I dratted Pa- 'Why didn't he take
Me too for Ma would say in every strife,
A simple smile of me would soothe her ache
As I was God's own angel in her life?'
I told myself what any child would say
A childly consolation, "all is fine"
For she had said, "Today's a special day.
I'm cooking saag."– the favoured dish of mine;
A knock at door- Pa stood, but where was she?
Went with the Lord, a brother left for me.