the burn

“do you ever feel like a plastic bag?”

yes.
yes i do.

or a garbage bag drifting through a rest stop on I-5.

or one of those thin target bags hanging from a tree branch like somebody meant to come back for it and never did.

or an exotic, one-of-one luxury find sitting under showroom lights while people circle it trying to decide if it’s rare or just expensive.

sometimes i feel like a clearance candle with a cracked lid.
sometimes i feel like a cathedral.
sometimes i feel like a little girl dressed too old.
sometimes i feel like a woman so composed people forget she is actively on fire.

that’s the strange thing about “soft” girls.

people think soft means fragile.

what they mean is absorbent.

we absorb tone.
rooms.
glances.
pressure.
expectation.
desire.
fear.
other people’s versions of us.

we become shape shifters in expensive lipstick.

and eventually all that swallowing turns into heat.

not explosion.
not spectacle.

a burn.

slow enough to survive.
slow enough to smile through.
slow enough to answer emails and raise children and discuss audits and sit in doctor’s offices while your own body betrays you quietly.

soft girls burn slow because we were taught that making everyone else comfortable was more important than screaming.

and maybe that is where this starts.

not with the men.
not with the divorce.
not with the diagnosis.
not even with love.

maybe it starts the first time a girl realizes being wanted and being safe are not the same thing.