Facebook Publication Date: 10/5/2018 17:10

Somewhere

Somewhere in an alternate, redder visagetome universe, a brittle bottle blond woman whose arches are still high because they never had to work a job where their feet got flatter even as their shoulders got stooped (or maybe they do, maybe they wear paper hats at 55, maybe they’re the ones with whom you get annoyed when they tell you the extra ranch is another 50 cents, and then she gives it to you just to shut you up, but she still seethes), maybe this alternate universe where women marry their abusers and sexualize their children and forces purity rings that cut off their daughter’s circulation even as they offer not a word on keeping them safe, maybe as they look out of a window from a house in his name so as not to look at the fresh bruise of the man who hit them, who will tell all those women in her feed, on the street, whispered in her auxiliary, glanced over at pickup/dropoff, tell them all to ‘man up’ because goddam it, she did and still does, maybe when she conceals and uses plum blush and purple shadow on the other side to ‘make things even’, maybe as she smooths on and over a bright red lippie, as bright as her desperate protestations and justifications, as she looks at the minivan she got for her birthday but is in his name too, where she wonders about her man child who is, every day, more and more like the child man she married because that’s what you do when you’re three months gone and you didn’t know doing *that* would get you preggo, preggo after you said no, but he persisted, and tore a blouse you never liked anyway which is why you lit it on fire and the bra too and the hipsters that could never go into the hamper where your mother would see, and then she would blame you, and then you’d never be allowed to use the Chrysler again, which was later gifted to you at your wedding and made everything ok, and now you wear red, and vote red, and the only things that are blue are your bruises and your soul and how dare that woman tell the truth, doesn’t she know how fragile, brittle—peanut butter brittle which how you told everyone you lost a tooth on your smile line and that just won’t do because smile because smile because smile so it’s fixed now but you know which one; it’s different, dead, how dare she cry in front of all those men when she hasn’t cried not once not once in 25 years and if that nice man with the big hair is a rapist what does it make the man whose shirt she is ironing this very minute as she listens to Susan Collins and smiles?

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