Ink I Bleed

third

A Queen. An Empress. A Goddess.

Smile with your teeth pearly white and straight. Make sure your eyes glitter when you look at him. Do not let the acid pour from your lips.

Paint over the bruises, paint over the pain. Wash away the tears, wash away the desire to end it all. Dress in white as though you'd have nothing to hide. Place your crown upon your curls, as though they hadn't been nearly torn out just the night before.

Be the Duchess of marriage and birth and love. Disgusting love. Love, when in truth you know it is all just the festering loneliness of people feeding upon the life others like maggots on corpses of once-free creatures.

O. The irony of it all.

Pitiful.

Powerful. Beautiful. Graceful.

He does not kiss you softly on the lips. He does not bear to look at your face. Instead, he makes you sob every night behind shut doors. He makes every inch of your skin bleed and scream and color with the bubbling swell of purple blemishes. He reminds you again and again, of the lies you must keep. Of the shame of it all. Of the everlasting cycle which you may never escape.

The Lord of the Sky. Always above you, always watching you.

Cruel. Heartless. Murderer.

Is it so wrong? you wonder. To wish pain upon the one took everything away from you? To wish to be free, to wish for simply a morsel of your dignity back after he'd stolen everything from you, only to humiliate you over and over and over again?

You lie for him. You stand there and smile and laugh and sing as though nothing were wrong. You lie and lie and lie through your teeth as a goddess, as a deity whom people whisper their most passionate hopes and secrets to. Yet, in a heartbeat, you went from the merciful and beautiful goddess of birth and marriage to—

To the hateful and ruthless bitter goddess willing to kill on her own selfish behalf.

But.

Is it worth it? you wonder. Is it worth it to keep lying to live? To paint the face of the goddess Hera unto yours?

Is living truly worth it?

Still, you smile. Still, you dance in this endless cycle.

Still. You can never escape this prison.