I Imagine My Mother’s Consolations When I Complain About Mental Load

You eat medicine because the winter makes you sad and you’re afraid of calling the pizza place. Your washing machine churns out clothes drier than how you put them in and the man who fucks you at least tries to make you come. You even actually come. You say no whenever you feel like saying no, and even say yes because you actually feel like saying yes. And who folds the laundry, makes dinner, dyes his hair, paints his nails? Even your vacuum cleaner has lights— like a pet, almost sentient, so you’re never alone. Even your kitchen is air-conditioned, and you’ve never had to make roti with your tongue sticking to the roof of your mouth, sweat dripping from your eyelids. In a bank account of your own you even keep some money. The capitalism you love to disrespect can be on your side if you make enough. You go to doctors alone and have a mustache but get it lasered. When you bleed, you bleed because you want to, and your cabinets are filled with pads. You even have the newer things you so casually stick inside yourself, tampons, silicone cups, plastic disks. No one calls you names. When the injustice of the world seeps into the walls of your own little home, you complain. A mouth full of protest. A new word every day for your specific suffering. And you, who mold and pronounce these words. You, master of the words.