Inheritance of a cishetero woman 

“10 things you should never put up with in a long term relationship”

“5 things he will do if he’s the one” 

I see articles like these every day 

that are supposed to teach straight women 

how we should expect to be loved.

I suppose in some ways it’s necessary,

to unlearn the settling for, the compromising our, the accepting 

the bowed heads and swallowed words, the reluctance to claim

to expect.

For a woman it is “strong” to stay with a man who has failed you,

they don’t understand why we can’t forgive the men who left sunsets blooming on our bodies,

who live with contentment at our fear laced discontent. 

We are taught to think,

“I must have done something”

when they split us in half and leave us empty,

our silent or not so silent no’s shoved back behind our teeth, under our tongue, 

down our throat.

We learn that to be loved is to forgive without exception,

that we must love that which ruins us.

We must love quietly, faultlessly. 

In the end, we learn not how to be loved but how to disappear. 

So we must be taught,

how to become ourselves again. 

How to reappear.

Some of us never learn it at all.