to start the work of unlearning is to see the cycle

WEEK 4 - Stretching our limits must begin with where we draw the line. What details are you leaving out? What observations or thoughts are you withholding for fear of appearing unlikable? Today's prompt offers two options: 1. Go back into the previous weeks' prompts and rewrite a response to include the detail that frightens you. 2. Write the scene you believe your family or significant other would least like to read. The goal is not to create shock value nor to feel pressured into picking open an emotional scab. Simply let yourself be round and full and fantastically human.

"What the fuck is wrong with everyone!! These fucking brights!" I growl into the glare behind a stoplight.

"Honey, they probably don't know how to turn them off." Jerel's voice a balm to my burn. The coolness makes me squirm.

"Well someone needs to tell them!!! It's ridiculous." I flash my brights back at them, frantic, useless.

"They don't know what that means, it's probably stressing them out. And it's not helping anybody to get so angry about something you have no control over."

"I'm not angry! I'm just annoyed." My toes curl as I lean into the steering wheel. Pulse against the tension. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. 

"Okay, you're upset. If anything, focusing on other people instead of on your own driving makes everyone less safe." They've withered somehow in the passenger seat, a thousand miles away. 

My softest sweetest one. I've erased the hope of safety, what else have I shattered?  

Remember how you suffocated your fear, tried to magic it into excitement and pride when Chris would blitz the 695, blast off east coast needle roads, this very same vehicle, but you in the passenger seat–cringing, calcifying–absorbing, uncovering. 

You'll bleed and bleat "toxicity" "insecurity" and "men" but can't unswallow all you drank. He may have punched the wall, but it was you who pushed the table, toppled bottles off the trailer deck, threatened the tulsi and thyme. 

Even now you blame this man when you know full well you practiced all along. Slam the door, dishwasher rack rattle, stomp and shake. 

You stare straight the halos of approaching light, forcing the worse worst. Seeth small. Simmer. Settler. You wear whiteness, wield it as your white hatchback, allowed to curse at cops, colonizer. Pave the road to meet you, expect doors to open and lights to shine correctly and when they don't? 

What might have been relief (how Ellie reads this little bicker "anger" when you aren't even screaming, maybe you could even turn that story true) collapses into horror that they knew its size before you let yourself see–the source, the cycle–learned supremacy.