How longer will I stay in this carefully crafted fantasy? How long will every tiny thing I do be measured to a scale to see if it fits the criteria? I don't long for something more, I long for something different. The smoke fills my lungs, the fire on the stove is too hot. I let my insides be coated with soot, outside slick with sweat and tears. I hope I become ash, each little particle of me drifting to every corner of the world, living a billion lives.
But if I burn, they will as well.
They get mad a lot. I made them, they came from part of me, either way, but it is as if they are someone else, someone else's. But they are someone else, and I don't want to talk to them like that. I'd hope that since they were mine, they would know me and I would know them, but their skin has been moulded by the places they've been to, and the people they've been with. I wish they were part of me again, drifting peacefully in my womb, together again, and we would all laugh. I made every part of you, then why are you such a stranger?
More than that, I wish I was a bit younger, like you, back when I still had dreams, and I gave a different answer everytime someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to dye my hair purple, to live with my gang of friends in a home full of flowers and paintings, every bit of me free and new, and smelling of the warm aroma of baking. Instead, I'm here because I listened to them, and now I'm stuck in this dreadful house, with a partner that's hard to love, and those kids, sad amalgamations of me. My hair is still black and frizzy, and the list I made for my dreams is long lost.
The curry is burning. I take it off the stove.