It’s never ceases
To amaze my broken heart
Men who use knives
To cut me into pieces
Then complain about the art
Made from their wounding lies
Tag: ptsd
-
This probably about you.
-
wanted.
You promised me you’d stay
After all your own heartache
You knew what you wanted
And nothing would get in the way
Both our hearts at stake
I was what you wanted
But soon came the day
You’d admit it was all fake
I was never what you wanted
-
hollow posterity.
You told me you’d follow
You adored me, you assured
Struck you like lightning
But your words were mere hollow
Skeletons left in the dirt
At the first sighting
Of posterity
-
Distant hunter.
You say you meant your words
The ones you used to string
Me along in a fantasy
Called my call outs absurd
Promised I’m still your darling
All while planning your leave
Growing the gap
Wider than the miles
Insisted it was just my anxiety
Set my heart in a trap
Coaxing me along with a smile
Quietly left me alone to bleed
-
Deadwood
What a strange thing it is
To be discarded on account
Of my ovaries
Uterus willing to surrender
Unquantifiable amounts
Of self-sacrifice and splendor
Lusting for my beauty
Impatient for more
Easily relinquish your duty
To hold my hand through it all
Simply because my biology
Won’t continue your family tree
-
karmic loop.
You’ll spend lifetimes
Looking for me
Stuck in your head
Haunting love rhythm and rhymes
Body unable to fully feel
Only sees on ecstasy
Moments unfelt
Wishing you had dealt
With tender hearts gently
-
more to the story
I’m here to tell you that
there’s always more to the story
Of the good old days
you remember like glory
-
make oceans of me
when history stops dictating how
you feel in the present and now
that’s when you’ve taken your life back.until then I’ll cry rivers into seas
about all that was taken from me.csa, flashbacks, grief, incest, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, rape, recovery, sexual assault, trauma, writing
-
Already a goner
I’m sick of apologizing for your behavior,
the way you walk up to strangers,
masking within you the danger
of a raper and his enabler.Stop approaching my friends
or the folks you think could lend
compassion or hope for amends
with the daughter you condemnin your insistent denial –
deafening silence for miles upon miles;
the way you won’t refute
or accept well-earned rebukefor the things he did under your nose,
believing now the lies he’s composed,
simply because you don’t dare
to admit you never really caredthat your daughters weren’t safe
from the same terrors you braved.
Rather, your first priority
remains to him – all your loyalty –because unfortunately for you
and for her and me too,
you are one of the ones
who failed to plungeinto your own depths of pain
before repeating the past again.
Instead, trusting not in instinct, but false promise
that he’s not interested in incest.But, you know what I know
in that place down below –
the raper inside him made you ask
because he reminded you of your past.Yes, we both know that our sixth sense,
refined by years surviving violence,
tells us when we’re too close
to thosecapable of ravaging small
bodies. After all,
we know better than most
that rapers take their time to encroach.I’m convinced you only begged
for what should be able to remain unsaid
because you knew he was just like
the men who made surviving your plight.So I’m asking- No! To you, I’m telling:
it would be more compelling
to believe that you miss your daughter
if you stopped protecting her father –the man you so regrettably chose
to stay with despite all of the blows
he landed on your body and mine;
Damage that withstands test of time.See, I’m done asking and requesting;
in my family of origin, no longer investing;
because after more than forty years,
I’m done crying wasted tearson a mother who at the end of every day
lies next to my raper, and in this way,
chooses denial over integrity and honor.
Before I was born, I was already a goner,having you as my mother, who at the end
refuses to believe or condemn
that she was complicit
in my elicit
upbringing of incest.csa, family, fiction, flashbacks, incest, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, rape, recovery, sexual assault, trauma, writing
-
I didn’t forget
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.csa, family, flashbacks, incest, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, rape, recovery, sexual assault, trauma, writing
Parker Stillwater 