THE THREE LITTLE PIGS AND MY SIXTEEN-YEAR OLD SELF STAND IN A ROOM AND SUBMIT THEMSELVES TO ANALYSIS.

After Margaret Atwood

At sixteen, I was a mistress of deception.

There was nothing horrifying about the life beneath the mask

No petrifying Medusa

No gargoyles in these curls.

It was just that I didn’t trust anyone

With my normalcy. With my laundry, dirty or clean.

At sixteen, you decide you don’t trust anyone, and no one trusts you.

I hid beneath the cover of what you know best at sixteen.

Sex.

Make no mistakes- it wasn’t given. Just implied.

Deliciously implied, teasingly implied, needlessly and always.

It flattered and unsettled in equal measures.

I smile coyly. You’re pleased and uncomfortable. You stop asking questions.

I was completely exposed

Showing nothing at all

And I was happy.

Each flirtation

Like a wall of steel-

But a millimeter thick.

As we talk

And you move forward, piercing the thin steel wall

I step back, throwing up millimeter-thick walls of steel in front of me as I go

Smiling, throwing up wall, after wall, after wall

Smiling. And getting tired.

If you’re brazen, you’ll keep going

As I keep stepping back, throwing up walls until

My back is against one. But its brick, and its solid.

This is the game. Now I have to give you something.

A piece of myself, a flash of soul, a promise for the future.

I wish someone taught me

To search for the answer in my childhood. The antidote before the sickness

Hidden in Mother Goose and Brothers Grimm.

When I was a smiling cherub,

My mother read me stories. 

Wishing to avoid an unfortunate end on a spit roast,

Three pigs set about building themselves houses. 

The first, wanting simply to cover herself,

Hurried and built herself a shelter of straw. Insubstantial.

The second invested in more structure, but did not consider

The weakness of her materials. Flammable.

There is another pig they forgot to mention- Pig 2.5

Building her house of thin sheets of steel. Fireproof. flimsy.

The wisest pig of all recalled the solid wall behind her back

The one that trapped her in unwelcome confrontation

And built her house of brick. Finally.

She learned that one can build a door.

A door can lock and barricade

Or open.

She learned to be strong enough to do both.

People did not enter her house by some inevitable procession,

A Russian roulette of advancing steps

As they did with her sister’s home of steel.

They entered because they were invited

Of her own damn free will.

She dictated who crossed the threshold

And who did not.

And she learned

That letting them enter

Did not mean

Letting them stay.