hey :) another new feeling and new idea and new kind of writing. spurred from my favourite painting. would love to write about art more.
you cannot choke divinity from a teenage girl’s bloodied hands. you cannot take anything from her. even god is terrified of her - waiting with an apology in the catch of his breath.
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i’d like to interview you…. about what? i dont know i think you have a lot to say and i’d like to hear it all. silence. and you’re very pretty and you seem kind can i have your phone number please?
yes. don’t ever call me.
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liminal moments where she was spotted: the crisps aisle of a tesco express near a motorway, the last flash of light before the sun set completely, on a roof with a something in her hand that didn’t belong to her, wednesday, engagement rings, promises from people with crystallised teeth, tuesday, her 16th birthday.
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Hello! I don’t mean to bother but how are you? Your mum showed me a picture of you the other day! What pretty green hair! Do drop me a call, my number is +44 NEVER SPEAK TO STRANGERS, I don’t work on Wednesdays, so any time then!!
xx
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you cannot take anything from a teenage girl. no matter the hours spent on her bathroom floor, you cannot take anything from her. she will always be tragic and contained. she will always be tragically contained with poems hidden under her mattress.
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an exhaustive list of the gods she worshipping in the privacy of her mind: chaos, the waistline of a ruined woman, her best friend, silence, loud music, quiet music, loudness, quietness, femininity, masculinity, the death of gender, cleanliness, promises, cleanliness, girlhood, cleanliness.
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How was school? (silence) Your friends okay? (a pause… a nod) Can you wash your hands before dinner please I Made your favourite pasta! Mum, my hands are clean.
but your mind is not. sit in a shower for years but it doesn’t make you clean. in the hazy blocked tears behind your tiny eyes i can see it all. dirt and dirt.
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‘The Young Martyr’ by Paul Delaroche is a suffering painting. A woman is depicted, mirroring Ophelia’s drowned, body. Many theorise that she is Delaroche’s wife. Though dead, she seems to be waiting to speak. Mournful, mournful eyes.
Just like a painting, girlhood is aesthetic curating. Become an expert; have the most beautiful, soft hair. Have the kindest, biggest, most apologetic eyes. Have soft skin and a natural glow and a natural flush and preened nails. Be an image, and lose your voice for it.
Become a painting. Become a young martyr and die for the cause of the tragic woman. The most beautiful - the tragic woman.
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i thought this was an interview. yeah it is i’m just sorting the questions can i take a photo of you please? yes. smile. i am. smile wider you’re a lot prettier when you smile. you’re a lot prettier with my fist in your teeth
(she is silenced. like every young girl she is silenced. the violence wrought to create gentleness is psychotic.)
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In ‘La Jeune Martyre’ rigor mortis has set on and the woman’s body is stiff. She seems alive and dead at the same time.
alive and dead. all at once.
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Hello Love! Congrats on your summer grades! Very good job. Love the pink hair too!
You’re a little star - you know that. My number’s changed now to +44 STAY AWAY FROM MEN WHO RUIN WOMEN. You’re so pretty and so grown up! I was teary at the photos your mum showed me x
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sometimes she wakes up very early. actually, it’s really often these days. she sits at her windowsill and lets herself cry. it doesn’t even matter that there’s nothing to cry about - she has soft small hands and the curve and lump of femininity somewhere in her bones. that is enough.
she imagines someone is writing about her. she imagines she is beautiful and pathetic and sympathy begging.
it is primordial pain. inherited pain. years and years of women who sobbed for love too. years and years of women who spent years in the silence of their mind.
obsessive. it becomes obsessive. the way she begs a god she doesn’t pray to to tear her apart like a pomegranate and put her back the right way because this couldn’t be right.
this couldn’t be right.
she is rage and angry and frothing foaming dogs and she spends 22 out of 24 hours a day picturing how she’d make god beg on his knees for forgiveness. how she won’t give it to him. she won’t give anything to him
she is slowly becoming her own martyr. it is not beautiful. she appears to be to everyone else -
but there is moments where no one in the world thinks of her. there is moments where she only exists in the image of herself.
in these moments, she is her own god.
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Delaroche is terrifyingly talented. The oils he uses in this painting create a glow around the woman. She is dead but glowing. Is there anything more holy?
*do you think it is a comment on religion? is she christian? an angel?*
No. It’s not religion. It’s never religion. She’s glowing because that’s what’s wanted from a decaying corpse. She’s glowing in a holy way because the only women anyone can worship is a dead one - at least, her soggy corpse,but-
*can you turn the music down?*
No! Delaroche would have liked it.
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dirtiness is not sinful. take what you can from a girl but you cannot take purity. you cannot take divinity. she will be pushed through quicksand and forget god and curse angels and rip herself wide open and ask the devil to make a home in her, but she remains the holiest temple.
not her body. not her mind. not her heart. her.
she is autochthonous to earth. soil is her home.
one day, every girl prays in the grass and laughs at green-stained knees. one day, june reclaims every heart-broken girl and soothes her spirit.
anger is not beautiful and rage is not beautiful and the whole universe is sorry for your pain. salvation will seek her anyway. non religious. non commodified. non sexualised. just - salvation.
the world takes everything. and it teaches girls to hollow themselves out to make space for rage. to make space for rage that cannot be shown to everyone.
sow the seeds of delight. antigone said ‘birth is the death of us’.
la jeune martyre was born in death.
dostoevsky says ‘a flower of melodrama in eternal bloom’
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and what of her? what does she say?
she says she would like to eat more apples and try to be a bit more real.
there are precious moments where no one at all is thinking of her. and in those moments, she exists only as herself. in safety. in love.
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