Laura's Commonplace Book

It was time for this to come down from the mantle. It was always out of place. It was several years ago. Months after what happened. I knew there was no way to forget the way the goblin men had belittled me. Lord know I tried to ignore the nightmares. I went to the market, searching for foods for something to help prepare supper for the evening. Then there in the corner, back behind the tables for the silverware, was this painting. But this painting. I felt drawn to it. I should’ve walked away and left it alone and walked away. But I picked up, I paid the nice lady, and I carried it home…

I fear this is the last place I can keep this to prevent it from wearing down any further. It has been some years since I first began wearing this bonnet, and now it serves no use to me. It has been torn down to a mere piece of cloth. Lizzie attached it to a note that says “Remember when you used to cover your hair with this? You worked so hard just to fit back in.” I remember how much it seemed that I needed to own it. All the other girls in town had one. With my hair disheveled from when I gave it to the Goblin men, I already stood out. I thought that maybe if I had the bonnet everyone…

Art seems to have a way to speak to people. This painting has been seen often as of lately. I can’t help but see myself in it. Lizzie had found a copy of it one evening while she was out and brought it home. After what had happened to us, this felt like the perfect representation of what we had become. Our innocence was stripped from us so long ago over stupid ideologies such as temptation and force and it had changed our lives forever. No man, no woman or child who knew, who so much as looked as us, believed we were redeemable. That loss of our purity had deemed us fallen women. But that…