Arranged Marriage

So, it turns out I’m better at writing about sex and gore than about my past. Nevertheless, I am posting this. I have been playing with it for a couple of days and it gets no better. So, if I post it I have to leave it alone. Perhaps, in future, I will stick with the monsters that exist in my mind and not my life.

I arranged my marriage all by myself.
There is no one else to blame.
No one tied my hands,
no one whispered his name into my ear.
I chose the flowers. I chose the dress.
Pinned the future together with trembling fingers,
called it certainty, then asked for no further questions.

I knew where every candle would stand.
I knew which songs would play.
I knew how the photographs would look:
our faces lifted towards each other,
two people illuminated by the same promise.
I planned that day long before I knew
who I would marry.

It turns out I never knew who I had married.
Or perhaps I knew him in fragments,
small sharp pieces hidden amongst the soft ones.
For five years, he played the part of kindness
he held me when I cried, which was often,
and sometimes remembered to tell me I was
“pretty”. But mostly he made me laugh.

People forgive what entertains them.
They see charm and mistake it for goodness.
They hear a joke and call it character.
When the news finally broke
it was easier to name me the whore,
than him the villain.

I loved him. I loved him when the wall cracked
beneath his fist. When the picture frame shattered
beside the door. When “no” became a negotiation.
When he asked afterwards why I was crying,
and I swallowed the answer whole.

I loved him through all of it.
Love is not always noble. Sometimes it is merely
persistent. But I stopped loving him
the day I felt his fist.
Not because it hurt. Though it did.
Not because it frightened me. Though it did.
But because in that moment
I saw the terrible shape of things.
I saw every excuse I had built around him
collapse at once.

The marriage broke before a bone ever could.

I arranged my marriage all by myself.
There is no one else to blame.
“It’s my fault you lost your temper,” I said.
“I have that effect on you.” I would have confessed
to anything. I would have apologised for gravity,
for rain, because I wanted what every little girl
is taught to want. A love stronger than pain.
A love that transforms suffering into meaning.
Instead, I learned that a marriage cannot be built on apologies
I wanted a love that would
last forever. That could not be arranged.