the right to write

M for the last few days has been asking to get to know me better well m this is your chance. Today i have been left staring at a screen wanting to say perhaps even expose so much but keep reminding myself now isnt the time. But i also keep going back to a time when our writing was a place for survival, is this any different perhaps not but i cast my mind back to then.
We first knew we could write when mum was going through a major manic period she had got it into her head she needed to be the good witch from a major fairy tale. We were three years old, mum was really happy whistling and cheery we were relaxing at the kitchen table drawing (something rarely allowed) suddenly we were lifted high into the air, for some reason when mum turned manic she had enormous strength, looking at us from below she said today you will learn a fairy tale from a true perspective. One hand firmly on us and one in the oven she removed all the racks, we knew better than to squiggle and squirm, standing still we waited. Once she had finished she said now get in, squishing ourselves into the oven we made ourselves fit. And so the lesson was taught, we were Gretel she was the nasty w*tch, she had the power to burn us alive our job to make the nasty w*tch turn into the nice one.
For hours we sat in the oven, our mind furiously at work, like writing on a paper we rewrote the hansel and gretel story, each time mum opened the oven with a match and said im still the ev*l w*tch we wouldnt cower but simply say the good witch is coming to save us. Until our story came true the good witch came back and mum released us from the oven. This was something she did over and over again she relished in being called the good witch and so it became her game with us. This went on until we were too big to fit nicely into the oven and so she thought of a new game involving some pipes and hot water, much more painful.
In time i learnt to help those inside with stories of my own, eventually the bad daughters stories were found, i would tuck my poems deep inside a secret area and they were found one day, the bad daughter was once again in disgrace. I was banned from writing, but it never left who I was. She burnt my fingers leaving them over the gas fire, burning the pallets on my fingers still i wrote, she put drops in my eyes so i couldnt see for a while but still i wrote, she poured acid on my hands but still i wrote, until one day she stopped trying to get me to stop, for the first time she acknowledged the bad daughter wasnt going to stop writing, she gave me some paper and a pencil and said at least if you will write you piece of sh*t (that was what she would usually call me) then write and i will check it. No secrets. So i wrote nice happy bullshit rainbow stories all the time really writing the truth in my heart.
When i was fourteen and at high school my poems were published mum could say nothing and i the bad sick evil piece of shit daugher had won. I might be all she said i am but i am a writer and no matter how bad things are right now writing is my talent and the way i helped protect those inside into survival. I may not be a protector now but i am still a writer and those arseholes who took our life have no leg to stand on because writing is a powerful tool to say fuck you.

Ashanti