The Truth About Women

Many of us are beautiful houses filled with broken furniture. On the outside, we are these majestic structures that stand tall and add character to the streets we stand on. But when you open our doors, you walk in to chairs that are broken for fear that someone may want to stay a while, cracked mirrors for fear of our own pasts and dusty tables because our cupboards are void of the food we should have to nourish ourselves when our souls are hungry. We have been lived in and not taken care of and a new tenant who may very well be worthy is often left to clean up behind the last and bear the burden of their negligence. Our beds have been slept in and there are often times that we thought the ones who have occupied them were doing us a favor by taking on the chore of making them. But we were too blind to see that they made them with dirty sheets and we've inherited bedbugs that will never leave. When we are sad, we turn on our faucets and flood every room we have over someone who isn't really worth a glass of our tears. We fire up our ovens and make meals for those who deserve to choke on their own lies. There are several levels to our staircases and sometimes depending on how pretty the picture looks as someone is climbing them, we may ignore the creaks and loud warning signs that occur beneath their feet. They trek through our family rooms and pay no mind to the pictures on the mantle or how we have strategically left a place for them and their children when we could have easily filled those spaces with more love for ourselves or someone who actually WANTED to be there. We keep the thickest layers of dust on our windows because we are too embarrassed about the condition of our quarters and are leery of those trying to peek through them and place something shiny but of little to no value in our foyers thinking they can "spruce up the place". There have been many so-called "maintenance men" who have come through. But their stucco, putty, rugs and wallpaper only cover the cracks, holes, dents and scratches that happen as a result of quarrels with the ones responsible for our deplorable condition. Our yards are large with lots of potential, but the fact that they have seen no water causes their bruised brown grasses to crawl in every direction to quench their lingering thirsts. When someone leaves, we lock our gates and hope to never have another visitor. When another mansion stands next to us, we slap some paint on our shutters and try to pull ourselves together so that it does not show how diminished our property value has become. Meanwhile, the wails of our hearts echo down the corridors singing a sad and all too familiar song.

TK