#maybe it's the way we've all benn raised/fucked over by the world but

[six-white-venus]

the worst trait of me and my family is probably this: we never learned to say the word sorry.

i) my best friend and i, we are no people. knives? maybe. liars? definitely. but people? i’m not so sure.

knives were never forged to be tender (what a shame, what a shame) and we too, fall and slay what we meant to protect. him and i, we go for the throat when we clash. we hurt and bleed and oh, i should be terrified, i should be running for my life, but all i am is tired and a bit lonely and would really like his arms around me.

( “can we please stop fighting now.”

“oh god yes please.”)

because time and time again, this man has held my heart in his hands and cleaned its festering wounds with cotton dipped in alcohol (always the healer, always the lover) and wrapped gauze around them with clinical precision. and i have walked through the maze of his head and tended to his withering garden, have dragged the sun and fresh air and all the oceans to the barren land to make it bloom (always the poet, always the lover).

him and i, we have never needed words because we are knives forged in the same fire and at the end of the day, we both know that he will be the one who wordlessly stitches my broken heart and i will be the one who sings him to sleep.

ii) let me paint you a picture:

blue that fades into red that fades into black that fades into blue that fades into red. loud, clashing and nonsensical. a pit in your stomach that was dug with desperation and blunt fingernails. how do you colour anger that is also pain, grief, hate, love, fear and truth? the smell of the paint is foul and clogs your windpipes. blunt fingernails and blue and black and madness. can you bear to look at what you created without flinching?

that’s what anger looks like on my father. a horror. a mottled bruise. a hellfire.

all his life, my father has been scorned, belittled, beaten, spat on. his mother didn’t love him right because her mother didn’t love her right. my dad loves like he hates. something is fucked in his head and heart and his words fade into black and blue and red and this shitshow always ends with me sobbing, bleeding, dying on the floor. my father watches with his hackles raised and his eyes red and wide and glowing. once wounded, an animal never sheathes its claws. it strikes the ones it loves and walks away with its head held high and hands trembling.

but here’s what happens when the curtains close: he pulls me into his arms and brings me tea. he wipes away my tears with hands that has moved mountains to make me smile. he kisses my forehead and tells me that his mom didn’t love him right. my grief is like anger and indignation and love. i wrap my arms around him and cry all the tears he never had the luxury to. who should say sorry, really? is it him or his mom or his mom’s mom or this stupid fucking world? my father has never said the word sorry. he never needed to. this is what love looks like on us. a horror. a mottled bruise. a hellfire.

iii) despite it all, i am not usually an angry person. i take after my father and my mother, after all. i rage like my mother (quick, loud, fire that burns out almost as quickly as it sparked to life) and fight like my father (aim, shoot, bullseye). my sister does something even mildly upsetting and before i know it, i’m cursing her to be miserable till she dies. not even an hour later i’m draping myself over her shoulder and bugging her till she rolls her eyes and smiles ever so slightly.

(“do you have no shame?”

“yeah no i don’t think so.”)

my family and i, we never learned to say the word sorry. because the word sorry never meant sorry, not to us. because at the end of the day, that’s all it is: a word. and it sticks to the back of my tongue and the dents of my molars and gets tangled in my mouth when i try to spit it out. so i grab it by its throat and thread it into my being. i find it so much easier to hide my pathetic inability to do one thing that doesn’t scream that there's something wrong with me with the truth of another three words:

“i love you”

and they are always echoed back to me, just a few million times more tender, in ways only we can understand.

“yeah, i know.”

“that’s great, but there’s no escaping dishes duty.”

“oh, shut up, you.”

“what’s that for?”

a pause and a hum.

“i love you too.”