CLUTCH issue 38
Photography: Julian Gomez
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They say the suburbs were built for safety, for comfort, for dreamers who wanted quiet lives. But no one ever mentioned how deafening the silence can truly be. I move through these pastel rooms the kitchen with its obedient appliances, the living room arranged like a photograph no one is allowed to touch and I wonder when perfection became a demand rather than a desire.
When did sweetness become a performance? Sometimes I catch myself in the reflection of an oven door or a bathroom mirror,tilting my head just so, checking for the version of me that fits the frame. She’s polished, composed, symmetrical. She’s everything this world told me to be—or wants me to be at least.
Yet there’s always a flicker behind the eyes The beginning of an undoing. No one talks about the weight, the pressure, of being well-kept. How intense it is to move through a society that demands you to stay untouched. To hold yourself together so tightly that even your breath feels choreographed.
But beneath the makeup and the dramatic curls, beneath the tight clothes and the lavish nails,there’s a soft trace,a subtle edge that refuses to be pressed flat. By: Melaney Rodriguez