Pest

Not valiant or vaporous.

Rouge Allure (2022), Flora Yukhnovich

I was treated with love but not respect, and so were my parents, so we grew up weedy and disrespectful. We grew up twisted and bent and tangled, recalcitrant, unavoidable, unnavigable, obtrusive, objectionable, we grew increasingly wild and stubborn and impossible, like the woods the prince cuts through to get to Sleeping Beauty or Snow White, the ideal woman: passive, pale, perfect, preserved behind glass, unobtrusive, unobjectionable, unconscious.

I was admired but not respected, and so were my parents, so we grew up proud but undignified, swaggery but swaying, a swinging sweeping spectacle, objectionable.

Yesterday I told my therapist that when I left last week, I felt like a baby: dumb and small, sad and fumbling like an animal, uncertain, unaware. But that felt good: all swagger melted away, all pride evaporated or dripping into the wet ground, no gilded guiding grievances, no wistful wisdom, no fanciful fairy tales that make sad animals sound clever or coy, valiant or vaporous, heroic or half-empty, half-dead, glowing from within like a ghost.

Q: How’d you get your skin so good, girl?

A: Poison and sealed glass. Like slugging but with less of a pulse. Like dying but more seductive. Dewy but never desperate. Sexy but not quite sentient.

Desired but not respected. Adored but never acknowledged. Good children should be seen and not heard. You are special because you belong to me, you are unique because I am singular and on-trend, scene and not herd, ravishing and ravished and ransacked and run ragged.

These princesses work hard and harder and hardest and then they’re nearly dead and that’s when they’re ripe and ready for the picking. You know already. They love suffering and solitude the most, this is their peak, their prime, surrounded by baby animals who only want to help, who only want to love and be loved, dumb and small, sad and fumbling, uncertain, unaware, little animals with nothing but love to give, loving but loathed, clumsy but swift, wild and stubborn and impossible.

You can work your whole life just to be special, just to be pure, just to end up dewy, docile, and half dead, ravaged but never respected, envied but never respected, jealously protected but never respected, preserved, poisoned, resurrected. The path of righteousness leads to a glass coffin and a bleak afterlife, your rigid rules, your resistance to reality, your rigor mortis, all signs of life declared a sin, all sounds declared offensive, and love is just more work, more hassles, more pests squeaking pointlessly, probably just hungry again.

You’ll never see me clearly. I forgive you. You’ll hear noise but you’ll never see me clearly. You’re forgiven. I don’t need it anymore. I’m skittering in the corners, underfoot, in the dark but I love the darkness now, small and dumb, dumb and full of love but I won’t work hard, I won’t be helpful, I won’t use spindles or sweep the floor for tired or sick or angry little men, I won’t talk to generous old strangers with ripe red apples to share, I won’t apologize to envious old queens or lie still under clean glass.

I never lie, still. I’m lazy and selfish and greedy and vain but these aren’t sins to me. I’m not hurting anyone. I’m small and dumb but I’m not enraged or shy or half asleep. I’m not blocking your view or your path or your light. Cut down your gilded guiding grudges and leave me out of it. I’m not laughing at you, that’s just the sound woodland creatures make when they’re running away.

***

This morning I remembered how my best friend and my ex started dating and they hid it from me. They were my two best friends in the world. And every friend in the world I had at the time knew that my two best friends were dating and were hiding it from me, and no one told me about it. Not a friend in the world, not a single friend in the whole world.

My two best friends would stop making out when I entered the room and they’d start making out again when I left the room, and all of my other friends witnessed it and never told me a thing.

And when I asked each of my two best friends why they didn’t tell me even though everyone else knew, each said the same thing: They thought the other friend was better friends with me than they were, so the other friend should tell me.

I got angry. They said I was being overdramatic. I moved away. They said I was just jealous. But for years after that, I wondered how I could persuade them to see me clearly, to hear me out. I wondered how I could win their love back, how I could convince them to love me more, how I could show them that I was good and better and best, the best friend they could ever have, the one who cared the most, the most loyal and helpful and hard-working friend in the whole world.

The glass was clean. I was still and quiet. You didn’t even look for me.

So here I am, gilding my grievances again. But I woke up thinking of both of you, my former best friends. I know I was terrible but I loved you both the most in the whole world. I loved you like a little woodland helper does, sewing your dress through the night until my paws ached. I was your horses, your carriage, your footman, your coachman, your sidekick mumbling gibberish, a devoted pet, a heartsick pest.

You are not forgiven.

***

Seduction is a racket. I’ll make a racket instead, squealing and scampering through these wet woods, respected but not admired, respected but not adored, respected but not loved. I have enough love now, I’ve been storing it up for years, I nibble a little every day. I am small and dumb and surrounded by love and there is more than enough of it, more and more and more than enough, mad respect to you but I won’t share and you can’t catch me.

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