MARISSA FAE MYERS
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FIRE BURNS IN THE HEART OF A WOMAN
I am a liar. Cleaved between two worlds, minds, bodies, and souls. My life has been shattered on the white tile of my kitchen floor, bursting into millions of pieces and glittering in the sun. I’m not a person, but rather a watcher of lives, peering into shattered glass and mudfilled pools and grime smattered on my bathroom floor and fog collected on the edges of my mirror. I watch, react, and feel, but I am not there; it is not real. I am stuck, trapped in an endless maze of feminine cruelty and contorted by my responsibility to be nice to look at and easy to digest whole. I look into the pupils and minds and flaws of those who live on the outskirts of society and see myself reflected in their somber pictures, finding myself buried in the folds of their wrinkles and whites of their eyes. If I could be real, strip the layers from my skin and brazenly call myself a real woman, would I not be ridiculed and crushed beneath leering eyes and lolling tongues? If I could tell the men who claim my hair, body, and sexuality that I am an immortal creature bound to this by a mortal body, would my days not be spent in the bleached, stinking cell of a mental asylum on the dredges of society? I am tired of being pretty. I am tired of being worthy; I simply want to be, and yet I lie. I fold myself into small pieces, my arms and legs and wishes and dreams flattened into fragile origami swans collected on the edge of a windowsill. I tell myself that I am happy and wipe away the tear stains on my wrinkled bed sheets and cream pillows, knowing that tomorrow morning there will be more. I am a spectacle. A circus attraction, someone to be locked up and jeered at behind the guise of my mental illness, queerness, and femininity. My mind and body turned into experiments, crowds of people sneering from the operating theater and spitting into the opened cavern of my decomposed chest. Their vile conformity poisons my heart, turning it black as it abandons my body and drags itself along the dirt-ridden floor toward the pale blue doors of freedom. I look into the crowd, watching as their faces turn into shadows and their eyes desperately avoid mine, voices quieted until I turn my head. I beg of them, “Look into my eyes as you would a man’s and tell me I am crazy.” They shrink in their red velvet seats, hands
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Volume 16 • 2021
