It’s okay to not be digestible

[M0rute]

Unfolding effortlessly into the fabric of enigma,
Controlling what one wishes could have felt
In defense of our selves and our idiosyncrasies, our needs.

Dreary fogs soar past the horizons of my temple, it begins to feel hopeless when you’d lost sight of the foundation you had written with pencil.

The ancient statues of what all I’d been built on stand scraping above the fog, withered and petrified to time as they grasp some sense of normality.

What is one to think in these conditions, much more so, what is one to feel?

[M0rute]

Serene yellow light flushing through the cracks between blinds of this room, a sullen reminder of the recycled taxidermy state that is hope

A dastardly one I’m far too familiar with, counting panels of wood along the walls to pass time. Each panel counted is a brick upon my chest;

Each time eyes are shut for rest, being the possibility of an assault from the mind’s recollection of what the body had previously endured.

My safe enclosure blurs the lines of my understanding between hostage and infant.

The conditioning one experiences over the years leave lasting impressions, this girl can’t remember what it was like to feel attraction without inherent shame attached; seeking attention is a sin and you ‘mustn’t color outside of the lines’. At least, not openly. Hostage.

An invisible looming string, the puppeteer of this being a tangled web delicately crafted by the one in control. For the purpose of maintaining that position, reinforcing that unsteady yet certain dread that seems to scratch at her windows at night.

Only so much can be recalled, and, even though you may have been there, it’s not always so easy to remember what precisely happened.

Doesn’t it depend on how you look at things?

It’s easy to say that years of development were thrown away in exchange for survival, but one can’t always put a finger on how the occurrences will impact the future of how their psyche functions.

Some are luckier than others, and the others—

Shipped and docked away, to be stored out of sight and out of mind in order to avoid any further conflict that may damage the fragile and disheveled livestock. Repeat the mantra to them that they’ll get better one day, they’ll make it to where they need to be. No matter how catastrophic the damage, these things are said with stuffed and stitched up with hope for a reason. Whether it be optimism, or the attempt to force another cow being slaughtered for meat out of the public’s sight. A dismissal, of where such a common fruit of labor comes from. This is how people delude themselves, the livestock’s psyche are never mentioned nor considered.

But, the cadence in my voice shakes each time I leave the prison, the sanctuary, the grave— whatever you shall name it. Regular heartbeat is replaced with a fawning complex, one to please and mask any hint of perplexity the average commoner would instantly recognize. Behaviors such as those deemed anxious, guilty, suspicious.

That never worked for me though, my eyes analyze expressions far too deeply. There’s no stress of other’s perceptions of my facial contortions in this shallow grave that’s been dug for me, or rather, one I’ve assisted in digging for myself.

The question always persists just out of the eyesight of my focus, when will the danger coming from within this cage finally unleash a self fulfilling prophecy? Hiding from the world isn’t going to protect me from it, in fact, with a person so curious..

One may even suggest that it takes off several years of youth. It’s difficult to spot others in cages like mine, I haven’t quite seemed to find anyone else digging their own grave of purity in an attempt to protect them from the horrors that are all too possible to encounter. Exiting the farm that has me sentenced for death seems redundant, but perhaps that thought placed in my mind is just another fruit from the seed of conditioning planted, with each word, or the lack thereof, by the omnipotent forces of the puppeteer.