Sherezade

How do I describe what it felt like being trapped in that house? The house that was called my whole life, not because I wanted it to be, it didn’t feel true, but that’s the name that my mother called it. My whole life, that’s the name of the house.

I walk home in the cold autumn. It is dark and trees mysteriously blend into dark fences and other dark homes I cannot see past. The shapes are uncertain without much light. I try to enjoy the peace of being alone but I am planning my next defence. I am practicing the sound of my name, my real name, not the one she calls me. How to hide my name once more, how to offer pieces of my flesh that matter less? Like surviving frostbite, the cold first takes the tips of your fingers. All my heat surrounds my lungs and heart and brain. I keep my most important parts in tact. They take my innocence, my precious value, but they always leave my life. An opening for me, I have some hope for a future that is unconquered.

She will call me by a name when I reach home, and quickly I must invent a story, a new name to feed her tonight. If I can keep her entertained every night then I will survive, like sherezade, until I am old, and she is weak. 

I look back now and start to feel, to defrost myself. It quickly becomes too much. One tragedy compounds on another, always taking advantage, one over another, that is the only constant. I understand what to do now, I face the truth and brace myself. It was a hard life, yes, I reply to an imaginary interviewer, maybe police or social worker.  And then I stare ahead blankly for an eternity. It was not a hard life, it was an abused life.