the end of hurt

A silent mother-daughter bond haunted by past trauma, where enduring scars overshadow healing.

i was five when i nicked my finger slicing a carrot. thirteen years and i can’t even watch my mother chop onions without getting second-hand please-don’t-lose-your-goddamn-fingers syndrome. she smirks at me with welled-up eyes. 

we don’t do tissues, my child.

she’s afraid i’d know how to peel the onion skin off too early. so every morning she reminds me how i bled thirteen years ago. over a decade / no ghost comes closer to my grandma’s old knife i had held back then / the nightmares smell like the faint teal blue walls of the kitchen i stroll in every day. 

i lean on the spotless granite slab beside my mother. / i do not look at her. / i wait

and wait

and wait

and wait 

/ she finishes chopping like she hasn’t been doing that for eternity / 

she breathes out a cold volume of air�"the uncanny resemblance to my whimpers of the loneliest nights gets me fidgeting with the cutting board. / i don’t speak a word though. / neither does she.

that’s the horror of it- she never questions silence. but she knows her daughter has enough cuts to have lost the sense of pain. / to have learnt not to taint granite slabs / not to lose fingers in a f*****g kitchen-

maybe, the end of hurt is not ‘healing’.

perhaps, the end of hurt is ‘not healing’.

~nayasha

Author's Note

Ignore the swear words. I wanted to be more real.