Marionette Strings & the Making of a Girl
Born,
and they wrapped me in soft pink and lullabies, whispered beautiful
before I was anything else. The first string tied
before I could stand— too light to notice, too soft to fight.
At five,
I ran wild,
feet bare against sun-baked ground,
petrichor clinging to my skin hair undone, laugh untamed,
I spun beneath iridescent skies, reckless as Briar Rose before the spindle, as if no curse could find me. But even then, the strings were there, gossamer-thin, threading through my wrists,
tugging me toward something narrower.
At ten,
I was already quieter. Less storm, more soliloquy. I let the world pull me into something mellow, molded myself into melodies of their choosing. “So well-mannered, so sweet.” Their words sugar, dissolving on my tongue, but beneath them, I felt ephemeral— a marionette
mid-motion, waiting for the next pull.
At thirteen, I started to notice the strings. Some barely brushed my skin, some pulled tight. I watched how eyes flickered toward mirrors, how beauty was sculpted, deliberate, like Cinderella stepping into her glass slippers, a perfect fit, but only until midnight. I didn’t hate it. But I traced the strings with my fingers, wondering what they would feel like if they ever snapped.
At fifteen, the strings had turned to steel. No one had tied them or maybe I had tied some myself, stitched them into my own skin
to make sure I belonged.
They pressed my hands with purpose
not as a task, but as proof of who I was.
The words coiled around my ribs, cinching tight—
but somewhere in the tightening, a fire flickered.
One by one,
I cut the strings.
Not in rebellion,
but in quiet refusal. Not all at once,
but slowly, purposefully, like Rapunzel unweaving her golden chains, like a siren peeling the velvet from her throat.
And I fell—not into open arms, but onto the
jagged sea rocks below,
as Ariel did when she learned; her prince fell for the fairytale,
not the girl who rewrote hers.
The strings are gone, but their ghosts remain, whispering in the hollows of my wrists, reminding me what I was
when I danced in the direction of their dreams.
But I do not dance anymore.
