My mother used to tell me what my wedding day would look like, how there would be a big church and a thousand red roses that matched the bouquet I would hold against a blushing white dress as I walked down the aisle. She told of how I would feel like a princess and I would know I had found the right husband because when he kissed me I would feel infinite. Daddy and she would smile at each other reminiscing in the days when they had been so young and in love and I would draw pictures in school of what I knew my love story would look like. But we grew up. Older and maybe wiser Daddy didn’t want another daughter and he left mother for a woman who didn’t remind him of the good old days but helped him relive them.
So forgive me for being afraid to look but you have my daddy’s eyes. And every time I look into them I see my mother’s broken face as she watched him stand out on the front steps with a suitcase for the very last time. I can see my six sisters and I as we listened to her tell the stories of every man instead of fairytales at bedtime and I can hear her warning messages as we all sat and learned the sad truths of the world years to early. Don’t trust men she would say; the world will rip you apart only for you to pour your bleeding soul into them and be disappointed when they don’t have the heart strings to stitch you back up.
My wedding is now but a figment of my imagination. To young I didn’t listen to mother and found a man who didn’t want the children I bore him so he left us overnight riding on a circular train track that had no way off. And just like mother my face broke and I would cry in the middle of the night praying my children were sound enough asleep that they couldn’t hear me bawling my eyes out at the lost cause that was their father. I tried not to tell them the same stories my mother had to me but it was the only way they would ever survive this world and just like mine had been, I ripped their childhood from them. Don’t tell me you can fix what I did, because you cannot.
I spent years shielding my face from men just to make sure my father would never recognize me in the sight of plain daylight so please forgive me because seeing your eyes make me want to run away. I cannot help it. You don’t have the stomach to digest the stories I want to pour into you and you may think sewing up my broken heart with your perfect hair is good enough but that will never heal me. So please don’t say you love me and just leave, they always do.