Parker Stillwater

Can you really forget the feeling of safety
when dad was the first man to rape me?
They say my body forgot and now must relearn –
like it’s as simple as choosing the upturn,
like it’s just in my head, the embodied feeling of dread.
As simple as riding a bike,
insisting bodies can’t NOT know what it’s like
to live more than just under fire;
my activated nervous system was simply acquired.

But I beg to differ,
seeing as how I remain undelivered
after all the remedies known to date
proven to erase from complex bodies the word rape.
No, it’s only your judgmental mouths
that are most likely bound
to remember what it felt like “before;”
only they can live out the meaning of “restored.”

But when you’re like me, a child
by my daddy defiled,
turned belly down,
taught not to make a sound –
easier when into my eyes
he didn’t have to deny;
but he did in fact try
to drown out all my cries.
So, tell me WHEN you claim safe entered?
Because all I remember
is a body dismembered
by the ones who were meant
to such a little body protect.

Tell me when was THE moment
my sense of safety left the present?
Because sense only comes from first feeling
love unconditional and unyielding.
But all I know is the white flag
of my mother, and the drag
of my father’s hands, bending into submission
the daughter – only loved on condition
of my silence
about unfathomable violence
perpetrated by dad
and mom denying it was really that bad.

Tell me WHERE safe disappeared
off to in the rear
view mirror of my timeline?
As benign
as lost keys to a car –
the kind that could’ve taken me far
away from the two bedroom apartment
where they laughed off all my sister’s and my torment.
Tell me again HOW I’ve forgotten
what it was like before all the rotten
tastes and smells of my dad on top
of me, telling him to stop
to no avail.

SHOW me now how my body failed
to hold onto this MYTH of safe?
When there was no safe before rape.