CW: sexual violence and abuse of a child

You named me: eldest girl-child, stupid prey,
scapegoat, surrogate mother, family
shrink, all for the price of one sad daughter.

You wrote this story about us and groomed
me to accept it. Hoping I would just
acquiesce to the role as your story’s
villain. Carmen, dear. You failed the landing.

You wielded me as your tool, hopeful of
power, inflicting pain with and upon
vomiting your bad feelings into and
relieving your moral injury and
stifling the warning discomfort bubbling
in your voluntarily empty gut.

You paid nothing then, save maybe your soul
I accrued lifetimes of emotional
debt to repair what you gleefully wrecked.

Cinderella’s stepmother took you for
inspiration but Cinderella’s got
nothing on me. Here’s the truth, mother dear.

I’d have been better off as the woodland
witch’s ward than with you. I’ve now learned what
makes a witch: a mother whose hatred eats
her heart, her white-hot hands burning into
my skin, down through to my soul, to wreak all
that was good about me before your reign.

Alchemising that destruction into
healing facilitated my death as
your child and my birth as that very witch.

You wanted me quiet, obedient;
my childhood innocence enraged your pain.
You got off forcing the simplicity,
the wildness of my birthright to submit,
kneeling to my mother’s self-corruption.

Keep Sweet – the death cult’s rallying cry for the
“weaker” sex, its fingers wrapping around
its daughter’s necks, choking us to comply

For the joy of our corrupted parents

I curse you.

May the daughters expose you, the mothers
who sacrificed us to patriarchy
for the gain of illusory power:
traitors to their own kin, their own children.

We will expose you, our grandfathers, our
grandmothers who broke our parents beyond
what they could bear. Offering them as the
burnt sacrifices to creepy uncles
and aunts and adults who hurt your children
Children who turned that hurt into rage and
pain, passing down this heirloom of trauma

To their own kids, their strong-willed punching bags.

Did it please you to rape me, Carminha?
Did it delight you to turn your other
children against me? The children who did
benefit when your eldest put her head
on the chopping block to protect them, your
little girl who offered her body, her
heart in exchange; to protect her siblings.

You made perversion your prize when you stole
me from the hearth of love to tear me to
pieces with your shiny white teeth and your
pale veiny french-manicured hands that I
painted for you and you would use to hurt
me, your good little receptacle of
a daughter who you poured your poisonous
malice into with ecstacy until
I followed every unreasonable
demand for a scrap of love, affection
and wishing to god I hadn’t. That’s funny,
mother. Your abominable god who
demands child sacrifice to satiate
His disgusting appetite, this god who
hates girls who love girls but not mothers who
rape their daughters and take pleasure in it

Go figure, you made your god into your
distorted image. He can only be
as holy as you: obscene task-master

Withholding appropriate maternal
love, beating me for seeking companions
in my peers, you were never a good mom
Or even a mom worthy of the name

I never needed you to be perfect
I only needed you to give a damn
I only needed you to not hurt me

You are a hypocrite. You are a liar.
Yeah. I’m gay. I enjoy eating pussy.
I cuss and I spit and I eat life with
my bare fucking hands. What you did to me
after my eleventh birthday, after
you got my father deported, kidnapped
me, took me into your bedroom to sate
your twisted revenge against the father
I resembled, your own little daughter –
can you not see how that is by every
objective metric that matters worse than
loving other women? Mamae, can’t you?

May you die. May it be a long stutter
of a death. May you be so scared you shit
your skinny girl panties. May you cry out
to your god for mercy, your false god who’d
be incapable of granting this. You
worshipped at his altar of pain, ensured
your end in your every act against
your daughter. This is your reward for hate.

You’ll convulse, gasping for air, eyes bulging
Finally, your exterior matching
your bloodless, faithless, loveless heart of stone

May you suffer, your sharp nails bending and
breaking, tearing at your throat and not mine
Oxygen deprivation turning your
pale white skin mottled red and blotched purple

Making a mock’ry of the beautiful
face that you used to get yourself out of
trouble after hurting me, Dad, Alan

Fear and confusion blooming across your
face, no less than you deserve, the way you
wanted me scared and confused when you did
things to me, your child, things that I could not
understand, things that you forced me to learn

When they find you with your veins burst, your brown-
Green irises floating in a sea of
blood-red, your corpse steeped in the filth of death
(That’s who you really are anyway, full
of rot and decay, the veneer of your
beauty gone – they’ll see you for the traitor,
The atrocity you are, child-fucker)
Only the ignorant or depraved mourn

You’ve already lost. My appetite for
life is more resilient than your dark
appetite for your own child’s destruction

May the wolves of this world rip you to shreds
your betrayal of me was not worth it, the
power you gained was illusory, in vain.
Vain, like you and your Chanel Number 5

I wish I could believe in hell for you.
For your false god and his prophets of hate
For people who hurt children and call it
The will of their horrible, evil god.

Being your god’s fave isn’t an endorsement of
Your character. It’s an indictment, mom.

about the author

Chel Hylott grew up between Miami and Orlando before falling in love and moving to the UK over a decade ago. Her heart still beats to the slow pace of the Everglades, though she has found a new wilderness near her home in Sussex to explore with her beloved wife and family. She is here to break generational curses and truth-tell, and she won’t be silenced any longer. Here’s to all the loud-mouthed disabled queers who make pyres of gods and gods of trees.