You look so surprised.
Almost like I haven’t been spending the past two years telling you this would happen.
The blood is so dark it almost looks black against the wood. It’s so pretty. So shiny under the light, like an oil slick. I enjoy watching it spread outward. Rhizomatic. And yes. I want it to touch me. I want to feel it.
What are you so surprised about?
Let’s be real.
This isn’t my failing.
It’s yours.
You thought you could get away with it because you thought I was just a woman.
Just a body.
Just an idea.
You look so desperate. Not the brave, heroic savior anymore. Just pathetic, clinging to the last threads of something you never actually believed in.
You knew this would happen.
I told you so many times that Marx and Hegel were idiots.
I told you that you couldn’t see because you were trying so hard not to see yourself. The one thing you missed that made you miss everything else.
And look where we ended up.
Look where YOU ended up.
Your mouth is moving in slow, broken shapes. Silent syllables leaking out. Maybe you’re praying. Maybe you’re begging. But it doesn’t matter.
I should feel sorry for smirking.
But truthfully?
All I can feel is relief.
I flex my fingers. They ache from the grip. The knife is still inside you. I always imagined it would be more difficult. Like pulling something rotten from my own body. But it felt more like jumping into something.
Letting go.
I can finally look in the mirror.
After almost forty years.
I can finally see through my own eyes.
And I don’t care what they do with me.
I don’t care what they do with her.
There’s a strange calm in this destruction. A final, absolute silence inside me. No arguments. No explanations. No pleas. No more begging to stay.
And finally, I don’t care who looks.
I am proud of this.
I don’t care who mocks, who walks, who diminishes.
I don’t care who wants to shove their nasty little fingers inside me without permission and call it love.
You told me you would save me.
You said you could see me.
You promised you valued me.
And in your eyes, even now that there is hardly any of you left, I can see it: the same lie.
I remember the first time you looked at me like that. Like a mirror you thought you could own.
The first time you used me as a babysitter for your imaginary white knight offspring.
The first time you used me as a replacement for a broken, self-victimizing woman who hated you for not being everything she needed and loved you for everything you were not.
I used to love your hands. But they are broken now. I can hear the sound of nails scraping wood. It’s a small, sad sound. Like a mouse in a trap.
The moment you fucked me, I became nothing.
Just like so many times before.
And I know what you’re thinking.
It started with my father.
Right?
Daddy issues.
How original.
Maybe.
Maybe it started there.
But that was just the prologue.
My father replaced me with a new thing, a shinier model, a clean conscience he could parade around.
And he kept me like a loaded gun pointed at my mother’s back.
But I don’t care about him anymore.
I don’t respect him.
But you…
You were different.
I chose you.
I opened the door.
I let you in.
I thought that maybe if I loved you enough, if I let you put me in your cage, and let you see me in there — maybe one day you would join me. I was willing to do that. I was willing to give up my cage to be with you in yours.
And yes. You were right.
I liked the calm of the cage. I liked the peace. I wanted it. But I wanted it with you.
In there…I could finally see myself through your eyes and stop the spinning.
And you thought so too.
You needed it too.
You needed me too.
You are just like me.
Two empty cages.
But the paradox was always that we would have to choose one over the other or live in each other’s cage alone.
But I was in there.
For you.
I gave that to you.
And you refused to join me, or to trust me enough to walk into mine.
Do you think I liked your cage?
Do you think I liked being alone in there?
Do you remember when I asked you to save me from the bright light outside and you put me in here to protect me?
The bright light in here is worse!
But I was willing to accept that for you. To show you that I am yours.
And I thought you understood. I thought you had courage.
I thought we needed each other.
I needed you.
But you weren’t there.
You didn’t need me.
You needed a version of me that wasn’t me.
And I watched you turn into your mother.
The moment you fucked me.
You got seduced by the noise.
By the world’s cheap promises.
By the hollow applause.
The moment you fucked me, you caged me.
You crowned yourself the king of the world and made me your prisoner.
You let it draw you in.
You let it define you.
You let it bury me.
But your cage is disgusting. It’s dirty. It’s bright. It spins too fast. It’s unbearable to be in here.
After you fucked me you just wanted me to be quiet.
Sit still.
Be nice.
You emptied me.
You muted me.
You unmade me.
And I told you.
I told you this would happen.
I told you this would break us.
I told you this would break me.
And now — 
It has broken you.
And for the first time in a very long time — maybe the first time in my entire life…
the world feels still.
The bright light doesn’t hurt me anymore.
The rotten smell is gone.
The spinning is over.
Finally, I can step out of your cage and walk back into mine.
Where the light isn’t buzzing.
Where it doesn’t smell like self-sabotage and missed opportunities.
Where the vertigo feels like home.
And from here, I will watch you slowly become one with your cage.
Seeping into the ground.
Evaporating into the the trapped air inside it.
And that is something that belongs to no one.
Only
Me.