slowly sinking, wasting { mylee }

kaijsa.

My mother would tell me that I was a fighter— but she would never tell me what I was fighting for.

Sometimes I would pretend it was a castle, a throne, another morning during which I did not hear her choking on what little air was caught between the dense walls of this home. These were the mornings that I was reminded that there is no point in fighting a losing battle— the war wouldn’t be won, anyway. She was a martyr for hope, for never waving the white flag of surrender until you had stained it with your own blood.

I watched her paint the walls red only to bury her in the white flag of surrender.

Goddamn, I would never be a fighter for purity.

Instead, I found a battleground in place of her graveyard; her sword resting against her own tombstone engraving what little of a description could be left behind about a woman whose name was defined by contradictions. She was a saint for the lost church, a religion still dying yet she had left her commandments upon my shoulders, laid the weight of her sins upon my chest and pretended that she could not hear my pray on the nights that I feel forsaken enough to do so.

My father tells me that I am skirting the ideas of revival— but he never tells me what I will be bringing back to see this world so dismal.

This would be sin not epiphany.

Sometimes I pretend it is a hymnal, a mother, the fire that burned within my chest when she told me that I was fighting for something far greater than what my range of understanding would allow. When I strike, I strike blindly.

Irrationality and fear sit well within the same palm.

I only visit her grave on the days that I pray, and I do not pray to anyone in particular. I do not believe in something greater than the ground beneath my feet— blind faith in the unseen is a burden not a blessing. At least I had placed prior hope in a heart I could touch.

This morning, when I had knelt at the window and knocked my knees against the wooden floor I did not pray for peace, not for comfort or purity or the hope she once brandished at her hip— this morning, I had pressed my palms together in prayer, yet I did not send a call out for a ceasefire to this calamity, no, instead I had promised myself that I would lay her sins upon her own tombstone like an offering— I will not carry a burden upon frail shoulders any longer.

My mother would tell me that I was a fighter— but never would she tell me I had already won the war.

When I leave her tombstone with bones that ache at the feeling of lightness I step carefully, softly, tentatively, like this body of mine might break now that it does not understand what it means to not have sin sewn within my skin like a signature.

I am looking for a name not my own.

When I see her, unnamed, unmarked— a battle not yet fought— I wonder if she knows what it means to be enlisted. When I sit beside her— troubled, emptied— I remind myself that I am a fighter, and that what I am fighting for has not been determined.

“Shit day? I’ve had a few of my own, and I’ll tell you this, they always seem to get worse.”