There was a noose you draped around my neck. A small blade looped around one finger. Heirlooms. You called them. I could smell that old blood on them.
And when I worried your ring in slicing circles my own blood was added too. You left the mark on me, the same mark you always left. So I left a little of me for the next girl. The next thing to wear this ring, and all those diamonds. As heavy as your love. But whatever makes a neck bend till it breaks, whether it’s diamond or rope, hurts just the same.
So now my lips are stilled. And my eyes glassy. I could always feel the cold prints of your gaze sliding over my skin. Now do you feel mine? I can’t blink. That might be one of the most exhausting ties of this prison. I don’t suppose it was something that ever even occurred to you.
If nothing else, you gifted me a new perspective. It’s hard to hear hooves when you’re being led by the nose. But from here I can see us in herds. Nothing but cattle. Maybe a little more expensive, but essentially, we are no different. Not to you.
One crucial difference. Cattle don’t possess thought. Or does my belief of that make me just as bad as you. Maybe their beautiful eyes were always filled with a hatred their slaughterers couldn’t understand. Mine were. Are.
You made your vows to my dowry. Promises to love me – it, for better or for worse. I can see that you do. These rich velvet curtains to my left and to my right are a swishing and vanishing proof. They blind me with your jealousy when footsteps of a certain weight come into the house and suddenly the shine of your trophy is just a shade too polished. Hypnosis of the wrong guest is something you will not risk. You thought I was too skilled at that sort of treason.
But when the red is pushed aside there is nothing to blind me. Now I can see all that you hid from me. The deeds a good husband would never commit in front of his wife. And a good man would never commit at all.
Can you feel it now?
It’s more than just a strange feeling. It’s an imprint we pass on. A living phantom. Maybe you regret the money you spent to make me look this way. They used the light and twisted it to reflect a spark left inside somewhere you couldn’t reach to extinguish. It’s that vitality you can’t stand. But it lurks deep under my skin. No amount of searing can exorcize it.
So you put your face up to mine. Analyse every inch of my expression. I know what you’re looking for. But I don’t have to fear this inspection. Because what you’ll find is exactly what you commissioned. But still. You search for contempt in the perfect pores of my skin.
This close your breath made my eyelashes flutter. Now it only steams up the thin layer of glass that divides us. A lock of my hair falling out of place might crack it. But oils preserve me perfectly. So I hold the pretty smile you had nailed to my face.
There are worse fates for a woman than being static. I could’ve been a slave, forced into labour. I suppose. But my punishment is to do nothing at all. That punishment began the day of my birth. Death has merely formalised it. There is no greater torture than to look out on a world on which you are totally ineffectual. That is a fact all us cattle know. Our cradles taught it to us.
We never needed frames to understand. It was you who needed the assurance. It’s the distress of the malevolent God to fear what he has created. To need to trap and confine and cover up. With the swish of a curtain forget each and every one of us.
Because you know, as well as we do, that someday movement will find us. Not the ones that sit here with their hateful eyes. But the ones in nightdresses who gaze up at us. The thoughts that rampage and batter beneath the perfectly smooth tones of our foreheads are audible to them. They understand that when our canvases crack it is nothing to do with paint.
But you underestimate them. You imagine they are already gilded like us.
The world always had a way of trapping women like me. But women like me will learn to trap the world. And under the watchful eyes of silent portraits, you will earn your frame.