Obituary

Photo by Liana S on Unsplash

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I thought I had imagined it.
But I keep replaying that night,
and every time I do, new details emerge.

The grin on your face.
The posture of your body.
The look in your eyes — satisfaction mixed with something darker.

You watched your plan materialize.

You stayed seated beside my grandmother and collected my humiliation, degradation, and pain as though they were acceptable tokens to be shared with the others.

You orchestrated the ritual
and witnessed the bloody collapse.
The collapse of an imaginary foe.

Crazy how I admired you from a distance.

You and the other girls possessed something I was denied: friendship. Sisterhood.

You moved together, studied together, existed together.
I always wished I could join you.

I craved the closeness you all shared.

But you thought the grass was greener on my side.
You thought I looked down on you.
That I was arrogant.
Too this.
Too that.

And your mother — along with the other mothers — added fuel to the fire.

To them, I was the ideal girl: confined, contained, rarely seen, or heard.
Perfectly caged.

I know the pain of being compared to others.
My mother compared me to you and the other girls too.

But I never planned your downfall.

You turned me into a lesson instead — something to silence your mother and the others with.
Something to climb over.

I was a late teen,
and you were a vicenarian.

When I close my eyes, I still see your face clearly:

the satisfied grin,
the dark gaze,
the look in your eyes
as you watched me collapse
at the hands of my own mother.

And you stayed there.

Watched it all unfold.

Then returned to your girls
to deliver my obituary.