Dead men tell no tales, but dead girls get their tales told for them, get them spun into webs to frame their eardrums so the only thing they can listen to is the faint memory of a trial that never seems to end.
Dead men tell no tales and dead girls never get to tell theirs. It’s only scribbled along their vertebrae, along their throats, along the bruises and scars they photograph and make famous, make celebrities out of wounds that scream.
They say “the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world” so tell me this isn’t poetic. Tell me it’s sad and tragic and make sure to mention how many canons are firing off in your brain as you look at her. And her and her, as their faces hang on walls, the mugshots of martyrs.
How can i keep writing love poems, romanticizing my own pain and apathy, romanticizing the numb and unfeeling part of me, all the odes to the parts of me that I hate the most. When I know I won’t be worth even a flicker of a memory when I’m six feet under. Make the pages soft, smell like roses, make them everything i couldn’t be, and maybe I’ll accept the poetic justice in becoming someone else’s muse. An unwilling sacrifice to be packed away with all of my own.
Oh let me feel for once, like i was important. Let young girls read about my disappearance, my stumble off the edge of earth, which was eventually my savior. Between the words of my memoir, an invisible ink is left over for them to write their own.
My demons yell at me every night, and i listen with plugged ears but the words always find a way in. New voices to stamp onto the back of my brain, new risks and new precautions. New knives to hide under my pillow and between my knuckles.
I’ll cry before i go to bed, let it slip before the next day, before the next report, before the next girl gets found. Make room for her in my psyche. I’d take her place if i could.
📷
@jaliilaaa
*raw pics btw*
