The truth is a quiet, frightening thing. It sits there, in the hollow of the throat, waiting to be acknowledged. We have spent centuries dressing up our anxieties in the costumes of morality, but let us strip them bare.

A woman’s worth—this strange, shivering core of her existence—is not a mathematical equation. It does not fluctuate with the frequency of her intimacy, nor does it dissolve in the choice of her garments. It is not something that is earned in the dark or lost in the light. Her body is not a public square; it is an impenetrable, private garden. To think that her choices, her movements, or the geography of her skin are yours to judge is to mistake your own reflection for the world itself.

When you look at her, you are not seeing her; you are seeing your own reflection trapped in the glass of your prejudices. Her life, her sexuality, the very way she chooses to breathe into her own skin—these are not matters of public record. They do not concern you. They are the silent, vibrating pulse of a soul that belongs to no one but herself. Even when you are close, even when the boundaries of two lives blur, you have no charter to degrade. To dehumanize another is merely to confess that you have forgotten how to be human yourself.

We throw words like “slut”—those heavy, jagged little stones—as if they had no weight. But they are not just words; they are the gears of a machine that grinds dignity into dust. They are the echoes of a culture that thrives on the slow, systematic theft of a person’s right to exist without apology. When you use them, you are not defending virtue; you are merely participating in the mass appropriation of someone else’s life, attempting to measure the immeasurable through the narrow lens of your own comfort.

If the melody of another’s life does not harmonize with your own, you are not required to listen. You are free to turn away. Go, exist in your own orbit. Let the other be the terrifying, beautiful, untamed thing they are. There is no room here for shame, for the small-minded cruelty that masquerades as righteous judgment.

Live. Just live. It is a terrifyingly simple task, yet one we avoid by trying to live for others. Let them be. That is the only real prayer.

© Beatriz Esmer