Esclava de mí

“I am myself when I dream. I am myself when I desire. I am myself when I am silent and hidden. Who could understand my true life if not Him? Who will give me this rest, this peace, this victory? Yes. Yes. As He says: ‘In grace and in silence. Your life is within you. Your true pleasure lies in secrecy.’” That is where her confessor wants her to be, like her mother before her, like her stepmother now, who is also her aunt, hiding beneath her clothes, without attracting the covetous eyes of men. That is where her father wants her, discreet, invisible, restrained. Yet she is all curiosity, sexual awakening, and an unyielding, rebellious desire to know herself and experience. And so she pretends to yield to the moral demands of men, whether it be her upright father, the sweet young butcher, the scatterbrained high school teacher or the priest, while she whispers to the world that from within her she alone will be the owner, the queen, the possessor, also the slave, the possessed, "but of myself, owner of myself, only slave of myself."