Expiration date
it is truly evil how the patriarchy weaponised aging
and by measuring a woman’s
worth by her beauty
and her beauty by her worth
essentially ensured that even
the most powerful of women
will lose that power in time.
We get fed this idea that “men get better with age”
mature men are sexy
men get salt and pepper
meanwhile
women are only allowed to age if done so gracefully
the societal pressure for women to remain hairless
essentially mimicking the likeness of someone who’s
prepubescent.
the most searched term in pornography is teen
there are only 2 years in a woman’s life
where she should be engaging
hopefully
consensually
in the production of pornography as a teen
18 and 19
i want you to sit and think about the societal impact
that this has on both
men and women
there’s just something so incredible twisted
that the thing that holds the most societal value for a woman
her beauty
is given an expiration date
Girlhood
being a girl is a blessing and a curse
it’s dotting your i’s with hearts,
it’s tying ribbons in your hair,
it’s sharing your favorite lipgloss.
It’s
to cycle with the moon
to lay in bed midday
to dance in the mirror
to cry in the mirror
to welcome hurt in the pursuit of beauty
to carry your mothers pain
to empathize with the abuser
apologizing
forgiving
starving
to cling to hope
to blame yourself
to keep birthday cards
to shrink
to be held
to leave coins at the bottom of your purse
to overwater your plants
to leave lipstick marks on everything you kiss
to hide your ears under your hair
to brush her hair out of her face
to spin around in frilly dresses
it’s
to find meaning in everything
to make sense of nothing.
ch/p ch/p ch/p
Little Tony, little Timmy, whoever you want to call him, his name doesn’t matter. Neither does the splinter, chip, sliver it all starts with.
What does matter is that Timmy was a very, very, naughty boy.
He lived with his family in a little chateau in a rural part of New England.
His family consisted of his younger brother Evan, his mother and his father.
Evan and Tony’s relationship was okay.
They spent more time together than they ever did with their parents.
His parents were very busy, working in the city from dusk till dawn, doing god knows what.
God knew, though.
So little Evan and Timmy had all the freedom two young boys would dream of,
but they were not alone.
Their family owned a lot of maids
cough cough
slaves
Marrie was the head of the kitchen, and her two daughters Lizzie and Beatrice took care of the house and taught the boys.
But why was little Tony a bad boy?
It started out small,
it always does
First it was stealing his brother’s food, which Evan did not mind, he loved and looked up to his older brother, as younger siblings do.
Then he realized, hurting his little brother would not go unnoticed, he would always get scolded by the maids
so
he started tormenting the farm animals
tying the tails of two of the house cats
throwing freshly laid eggs
riding on sheep
drowning two dogs in puddles of water
breaking the chickens legs
…
nature also didn’t go unnoticed
he burned household plants
carved obscenities into hundred year old trees
broke every branch he could find
jumped on the pile of rocks he found a few feet behind the house with crosses on them
where Marianne and her two daughter would weep
everything that timmy could get his stinky little hands on, he punished.
Punished he felt.
He felt this way too, on one unimportant day in November.
He was throwing around one of the old wooden toys that he had been given to by Beatrice,
when all of a sudden he yelled
“OUCH!”
oh
a little wooden
chip
entered under his little fingernails, rapidly
a finger of a small colonizer, was now a part of this ancient wooden toy
no one cared
he continued with whatever he was doing, some hours went by and he begins to feel his finger going numb, numb like he thought all the animals and trees were when he hurt them
he didn’t know this feeling, at all.
The feeling of numbness continued throughout his whole hand, he got so angry he hit his hand onto the fire place
he was shocked
it sounded like
wood?
he felt nothing, he just heard the sound of wood, he could not explain it.
Tony started to hear things he never heard before, he heard the animals talking back to him, he heard the rock he was kicking shouting vulgarities back at him, he heard the trees whispering.
“I’ve gone mad”, he thought. No one noticed,but his little brother Evan.
He noticed right away, just didn’t say anything, he was as confused as Timmy but he knew sooner or later it would be over.
that night it was raining, thunderstorms and fog
it was almost dinner time when little timmy couldn’t hold it in anymore
he opened the back door and sprinted out to the garden with a blood curdling scream
Evan slowly hid behind the door and watched it all unfold
Tony screamed like the cat he tortured two weeks ago,
screams of agony, screams of a son of god turning into a tree
branches started sprouting out of his little fingernails, his face turned green as he saw his feet becoming roots and he became one with the earth.
He choked on leaves, and at last his skin turned into a brown crust.
Evan saw the entire transformation unfold right in front of his eyes when Beatrice grabbed him by the hand and said
“oh your parents aren’t gonna like this one, they will tear that tree down the first thing in the morning”
and so they did.
Timmy was never searched for, never found.
Some say he turned into a tree
…
but that’s absurd
Right?
Rebecca Krajcova
