mother

Keep the boys away, Emma Jane,you must know what you do to them.My mother's fears of boyseating up my smiles,feeling my calve musclescurve under their touch asthey ease my legs apart,are borne from her self-loathing.She's told me I'm unwanted.She's told me I saved herfrom becoming Sylvia Plath.And yet I mortify her,I keep her tossing all night long.She hates knowing they've touched me.She hates knowing I liked it.She remembers me in my tinyunderwear, sticky little thighsglued to the couch withpopsicle juice and messy toddler fingers.She watched Jurassic Park with meevery day as I helped myselfto sliced hot dogs and macaroniand she helped herself to slicesof Sam Neill. Imagined himlowering his aviators and freeingher from my tyrannosaurus father.Imagined his dew-drop blue eyes feastingon her flesh as I ceasedto exist in reality, a virtualdream like the dinosaurs on the screen.But I never went away.My hair grew long like sheliked it and I chopped it off.She stopped buying my underwearas they lost their cotton tomake room for the lace. She sawher doll leaving her, no longerbegging for Jurassic Park. Nomore Sam to feed her insecuritiesand fantasies, just the rumbleof water in a glass as my fatherboomed home at night. Until.A snowy day. A quiet theater,solace amid a manic film festival.She felt her hips fill the seat, cursedherself for eating for the first time in days.She touched her hair, cursed the frizzthat never tamed like her daughter's did.She brushed her nose as she stood,for fuck's sake why is it so big?!And then he was there. Just behind my aunt,dew-drops gleaming, smile wide as ever.My mother's face flushed,her thighs ached as they clenchedwhere she stood. He passed. Continued walking.My aunt chuckled, swore he was looking at her.My mother, breathless, swears it was at her.But her hair is hideous, after all. Her nose enormous.And those goddamn hips must take upthe entire theater. How could shelet herself out in public, she thinks.How could she have imaginedhis hands on her worthless breasts?That night she comes home andthrows my training bras away.She watches my growing hourglass danceand knows that boys will fuck me.The Xanax is extra sweet that night.

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