How to Forget: A 12-Step Guide
Say your evening prayers. Rise from your knees, brushing any dust from your nightgown. Turn off your nightlamp and slip under your duvet.
Extend your slender fingers to your bedside table, reaching for worn rosary beads.
Thread the chain between your unclean fingers, grasp at it desperately with white knuckles. With your other hand, tenderly trace your palm– trace the path that had belonged to her.
Remember how warm, drunken hands slipped under your blouse. Remember their chipped nail polish, the ink-stained wrists, the taunting ghostly memory. Remember how you did not stop them. How He watched as you were a mere breath away from the garden, from the fruit you were never meant to taste. How your lips parted. The strange sensation; beautifully different, yet almost, almost familiar, like discovering a forgotten lifetime, a fragment of your soul.
Stop.
Cradle the beads in your trembling hands. A lifeline. A noose. Feel the weight of the cross as it presses into your palm; a stabbing accusation. Plead to Him. This is not who you want to be. You will lock the memory away. If this is what He wants, you’ll do it.
But it stirs.
Leviathan lies in the pit of your stomach, writhing to be freed.
Tighten your grip. Will for the cross to brand you; absolve you.
It was a moment of weakness. Temptation.
Warm breath against the crook of your neck. The sweet scent of something forbidden.
You should have resisted.
Why didn’t you?
The beads have knotted themselves into your fingers.
This is lunacy.
Stop it, now.
Realise you are unable to undo them this time. A shaky inhale. You speak:
‘Hail Mary, full of grace...’
Fingers trace the curve of your spine.
‘the Lord is with thee...’
You didn’t stop her.
‘Blessed art thou... amongst women...’
You wanted it.
You still do.
‘and Blessed... is... the fruit...’
Lips, soft. Finally, press into your own.
Let the empty silence suffocate the room. The past lingers– the ghost of what once was; so bittersweetly semipermanent.
The bedroom door creaks open, the warm candlelight seeps through, and you feel your mother’s shadow encloak the room.
Close your eyes. Remember what matters.
Mother plants a tender kiss on your forehead. It is uncomfortably warm. You don’t deserve it.
She peels the tangled beads off her daughter’s limp fingers and drapes them over the bedpost.
Protection.
But from what?
You are the monster. Accept that. How can He protect you if He is the very thing you hide from?
Wait for the door to creak shut. Place the beads in your bedside drawer and slam it closed. For that smirk will continue to linger in the back of your mind. Leviathan only grows more restless as it starves.
You will not be cleansed.
Awake beneath the ticking clock of morning sunshine. Say your prayers. Kiss the cross pendant of your rosary beads, slip them into the pocket of your Sunday dress. Smile warmly as you greet your family.
Repeat as many times as necessary.
Written by Bella Meurte.
fan of the undead, the strange and disturbing, etc...