Woman Unmade

I am a dangerous woman.

A spook beneath your bed.

Clutch your pearls, hug your handbag tighter, lock your doors.

Say a silent prayer through clenched teeth and a tight jaw.

Watch me out the corner of your eye, and never turn your back on me.

I can’t be trusted.

I am a monster.

…….

…….

……

……

Only…I don’t feel like a monster.

I don’t feel scary.

I don’t feel big or strong or spooky.

I don’t feel powerful.

I feel less like the spook, and more like the spooked.

Less like the powerful, and more like the powerless.

I feel totally, completely and utterly helpless.

I look in the mirror, and I don’t see what they see.

I don’t see danger.

I don’t see evil.

I see pieces - a million fragments of a heart shattered by disappointment, betrayal,

and by hope that should have died, but didn’t.

I see the weight of sleepless nights—the looping thoughts,

the words I said wrong,

the ones I never said at all.

I’ve punished myself more than they ever could.

Scolded myself for every misstep,

every silence,

every outburst,

every time I wasn’t soft enough,

or loud enough,

or good enough.

I’ve hated this body.

Loathed the skin I’m in.

Been taught to mistrust my own mind—

taught to fear my own fire,

my own knowing.

They call me a bad mother.

They call me too clever, too sly—as if intellect is a weapon

when it belongs to a woman like me.

They say I twist truth,

that I charm, deceive, manipulate.

That I’m a danger,

a threat, a warning sign.

And sometimes, late at night,

I wonder if they’re right.

Maybe I am the spook.

Maybe I am the monster.

Maybe I’m not the broken thing in the story.

Maybe…. I am the break.

How do I reconcile the difference between what they see, and what I feel?

What truth do I hold in this body?

Do I become the evil they say I am—lean into the monster,

grow teeth, bare them back, and growl?

Or do I stay who I think I am,

even if I don’t really know who that is anymore?

Even if the shape keeps shifting

and my reflection won’t hold still.

Some days I’m sure of my heart.

Other days, I lose it completely.

There is so much noise—a constant whirling, swirling storm in my mind.

Static that I can’t switch off.

I don’t know who I am.

I don’t know who I want to be.

And honestly, I don’t know if I get to choose.

Because they got to it first.

They got to my story,

rewrote it before I could grab hold of the pen.

They took my name,

my motherhood,

my memory,

my mind.

They taught me how to doubt myself.

How to gaslight my own spirit.

How to disappear without dying.

And maybe that’s the most dangerous thing of all—

not the monster they say I am,

but the woman they’ve unmade.

The one they hold

in confusion,

in surveillance,

in control.

The one they have already claimed

as theirs.