Living in the Family Line

She's the woman at the bus stop, the one meeting him in a dark alley, sneaking behind corners, the one whose perfume he smells like when he comes home...the one you hate, but are strange drawn to...to study, to know, to someday be...the other woman

Weakness. It should be outlawed as the 11^th commandment in my opinion. Yet I’m breaking my own law. I’ve become the rubbing spot in the fabric, a defect that the consumer puts the cloth down because of. I know this and yet I still continue with my life, laughing, smiling, small talk. Frivolous things that couldn’t matter less in this world. I’ve seen her, God I’ve gone further and had a conversation with the woman, but I have no hatred for her, no loathing, no contempt, not even the envy that I had expected the first time I saw her. I don’t have sympathy either though. But that’s an emotion I quickly learned was a useless trait to carry for anybody, including yourself. Sympathy makes you vulnerable and vulnerable is as horrible as weak. Not that I should be making a big show on how I’m strong… because I’m not… not anymore.

     The easiest thing to hide behind is hate; I’ve done this more times than thinkable. Now I only feel hate for three things. Him, myself for being with him, and the mirror that makes me look at myself. Do I do anything though? Do I escape the cycle? Of course not, I’m just a spider in the middle of the kitchen, knowing perfectly well that someone will be along in a moment to stop my wanderings, yet still not moving. Some of us have an excuse. An excuse we’ve fed into our heads and now some of us even believe it to be true. Love, Ha. I know there’s no such thing. As my mother said once before going out.

“There’s living to see tomorrow and sex; everything in between is black.”

     W***e. It’s a word with much familiarity. W***e is the black eyeliner caked onto my mother’s eyes, the red lipstick, the perfume, the secrets, the fact that I was able to look that woman in the eye, in the eye!

And say, “Fine mama’; how are you today?”

Heels click on tile, I look into the vanity mirror from eyes lined with black, the taste of perfume feeding into my mouth smeared with red, forcing me to breathe in the taste of a gas chamber.

***

Weakness is a sin, but there is no sin past denial and denying is a choice I live without. I am the w***e, I am the other woman, I am my mother.