Vachon Imagined

“Thank you. I wish I could make it beautiful for you,”
she said,
from two mouths at once—
one draped in thorns,
one humming lullabies.

She wanted to apologize.
She wanted to soften.
She wanted to fold herself small,
to not offend the man,
to not disturb their sensibilities—
men who raised women to doubt themselves,
to shrink beneath their looks of disgust,
to twist beneath their looks of enticement.

She wanted to vanish.

But truth would not vanish.
Truth would not soften.
Truth would not apologize.

She tore herself from equations.
She tore herself from paradigms.
The x’s and o’s stayed on the page,
but her voice made them leap.
Her hands made them dance.

She did not turn x into o.
She did not make o palatable.
She tasted the darkness inside herself—
the darkness that wanted to scream to mountaintops
the pain she could no longer endure.

She could no longer wait for someone to take her,
like a flower longing to bloom—
only no one came.
Not her parents.
Not her grandfather, whom she thought she loved most.
Not the therapists who earned their wages on her permission.

She faced herself.
She mirrored herself.
She bled.
She trembled.
She rose.

Holding the flower she once was,
she became the rose.

No one to soften her bloom.
No one to censor her nightmare, her rage.
No one to tell her to be polite.
No one to tell her to be enough.

She knew the center of the rose existed.
She knew, no matter where she went,
or if she decided to bloom or not,
she was the center.
She was the rose.