Waif

by Samantha Kolesnik

I was a flesh case full of secrets and other sad things. If our marriage did get worse—if he ever did decide to graduate from fist to knife and cut me open—all his secrets would come tumbling out. I would stain the carpet with our failed marriage.

These tears were tried and true, as often a part of my life as were other bodily functions, and kept just as private.

The older I became, the more convinced I was that no one escaped this earth unscathed by human suffering.

I’m not sure how men thought women were supposed to react to pain because our tears seemed to send them into panic or rage.

And when she’d catch me staring, the weeping would stop, as if my mom had a firm hand on the faucet of her pain.

It was, perhaps, my mother’s manner of acknowledging I was no longer under her care, and that as an adult woman, I would have to navigate the world of men alone.