Bad Fruit

by Ella King

If choosing is a muscle, mine has atrophied from disuse and although I keep practicing, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to do it.

You have to picture yourself when you choose an outfit or a piece of jewelry, imagine yourself wearing this or that, but when I think of myself, I see only my made-up face and pink jumpers, me in Mama’s image, and then I don’t want to think anymore.

“Humiliating” from the Latin, humiliare, “to humble,” from humilis, “lowly,” from humus, “earth.” To be brought low. To be brought to the ground.

“Our entire visual history of motherhood is idealized. That chubby baby is God. He’s perfect, so his mother can be perfect. But what about real children, real mothers? There are no paintings of mothers throwing things at their children or crashing cars with their children inside.”

“When does a mother switch from protecting her baby to destroying it? In the womb? Or is it later?”

She will sketch these images forever, mother and child, mother and child, trying to solve the dark clot of a question we dare not utter even to ourselves: If our mother loves us, why does she hurt us?

Guilt is liquid, poured out by the person to whom it belongs, taken up by someone entirely different.