Don't sleep on the patriarchy
Patriarchy is the beautiful, thousand-thread-count bedsheet stretched upon a king-size, inflating like a bubble in the middle, woven with threads so intricately, you can practically hear the twang of their singsong melodies as they seduce you into a dreamless sleep.
The bedsheet that you forget you made forts with as a child, hiding in a chamber of your secrets, oblivious to how paper thin the walls were. The bedsheet you bled upon that first uncomfortable night where your pajamas were so stained you threw them right away but the sheet was simply washed and doused in fragrance before sneaking it back into your room, as if nothing ever happened.
The bedsheet you forget about after moving away for five years but it patiently waits for you back home, loose threads and all, but still taking up just as much as space as it sprawls over your bed, wet with your sweat and discomfort as you sit down for another dinner that your mother prepared with the utmost love and pride but all it took was for a man to say “oh you actually didn’t do so bad” and she is laid flat on the ground, rolled in a stained sheet disguised as comfort and holding but is nothing more than smothering.
The bedsheet fitted over the bed you sit upon cross-legged as hordes of mourners invade your home after the older son of the house decided to see himself out, so now suddenly your importance transcends the demure daughter role, as women approach your bed excitedly, presenting you with the possibility of marriage, ensuring that despite all the loose threads and tears in the sheet under you, it can soon be transformed into a baby carriage but for now it must be used to cover up all this damage.
The bedsheet that you are laid upon when you are born and coddled in unwillingly until you are old enough to dress yourself so you begin to explore your body and enjoy the accessories until your mother sees the outfit that you chose and begs and pleads for you to consider covering up for women who will mock you while the men will eat you up so she wraps the sheet around me like a cloak and I wonder how to tell her that even Red Riding Hood was plenty sheltered but she chose to indulge the wolf on her own.
The bedsheet that is sentimental for the family so it is passed down from master to children’s bedrooms, and is eventually reduced to a rag we use during arts and crafts for it has traded in its marble-smooth surface for rips and lint and cigarette burns and yet it is glorified at home for it helps us trace where we come from but is this raggedy cloth really anything more than a chloroform-induced, smother tactic that silences our differences and encourages us to continue simply lying around rather than finally the fuck getting up, and throwing those distracting tatters out?