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.
Tag: sexual assault
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make oceans of me
csa, flashbacks, grief, incest, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, rape, recovery, sexual assault, trauma, writing
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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
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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
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Like a hatchet
You tell me to bury the hatchet
when I’d rather use it to fracture
the lives of the ones who took their sharp
ills out on my body, now remarkedyet, able to see who benefits from such a plea;
silence the echoing screams
pouring out of me without fair warning.
From suffering to scorning,
not just from the scars of their weapons of choice
but from the kindhearted ways you, too, silence my voice –
my only real weapon now that I’ve grown
up old enough to choose to own
the damage that results from causing a racket.
So, no I will not put down my hatchet
because what your request really means
is to wipe my face and hands real clean,
fall in line with the “forgiving” others,
stop being unsightly and such a bother.
But I’ve tried to bleach my collar and nail beds real white
I put up the darndest of fights,
and yet I’ve learned in all my failing;
no matter what I do, you’re always complaining.
I’ll never be washed white as snow.
It’s because there’s no way to erase what I already know;
that the likes of you and the others who
so blindly continue
to cover up dark truth in white linens
are the realest of child-raping villains.The story in my bones, far more spooky
than the fire burning in me like a fury.
Despite the risk of speaking, I’m still here wielding
this hatchet; so fucking unyielding
is what I became when my parents turned into monsters –
the saving grace that my broken mind conjured
in the middle of a terror that destroys,
creates in living bodies the deepest of voids.
When just like my rapers, also invaders
were the onlookers, determined blind fakers,
insisting they don’t see
anything wrong with what was done to me.
They dare now insist and demand
I put down my weapon on their condescending command.But still my hatchet remains in my hands –
I’ll carry it all over this stolen land,
with it mark up the books, records of all that they took
from me and the many adult survivors, butt of your insults
and wary glances from the ones who wouldn’t take chances
of ruffling feathers by considering whether…
The truth is that children who ask for help
have already survived what can’t be unfelt…
Or, that children who muster enough sound
to ask why it’s normal for dads on their kids pound
or why mothers are too sick and sad
to see the ugliness inside their baby dads…
Or, that kids who simply say hey,
I get hit by three set of hands every day…
Are worth trusting enough to take a second fucking look.
You are the same, like those who misunderstood
that the truth cuts and tears
and though bleeding doesn’t always seem fair,
sometimes that’s what it takes to salvage
the good left in all the wreckage;
not just of the bodies who bled as victims,
but of the ones who, like you, the villains
who plowed and plundered, raped and broke apart
innocent bodies left alone in the dark
shadows of your turned backs.
That’s why I continue to hack
away with the coldness of my blade.
For my voice is all that was saved
when I finally grew old enough to search for ways
to do more than sit and pray for the body I had before
I became so badly beaten and torn
from the inside out, despite your dissociative doubt
that one so well put-together could have endured
the process of witnessing in silence all that is impure.
My hatchet, you so greatly fear
is my proof that I came too near
to the underbelly of human nature –
the stuff you turn sterile in lectures
and podcasts about the ones you deem
are better not kept in the dark unseen;
for you’d rather consume and binge
words about the perpetrators. So cringe
to think this is how you get off,
all while telling victims who speak up ENOUGH
all ready! with the bleach bucket
to silence those of us causing a ruckus.
With our hatchet-sharp voices, no longer silent
Echoing on about your compliance.
With my words I’ll sound the alarm
About all that continues to cause us such harm.cptsd, csa, flashbacks, grief, healing, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, rape, recovery, sexual abuse, sexual assault, trauma, victim advocacy, writing
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Could’ve been somebody
I could’ve been somebody who didn’t flinch or wince
at every sound out of place.
Living life in a dream state,
known to dissociate, disconnect, and escape
nightmarish recollections of all that I hatein me – what no one wants to me to surface;
find a prettier purpose,
quietly close the curtain
on all that was taken –
like it’s easy to move on,
sing a happier song.If my body could produce
a sound, lighter, or induce
sweet melodies from my lips,
I swear all of me I would give
to be cleaner and easy
to digest than all my queasymemories and pleas turned into rhymes.
Believe me, I try all the time
to open my mouth
and let out things that won’t make you frown,
or sob in a puddle; surprised
beauty like mine is so deprivedof days where the sun fully shines,
where what’s lost is behind –
no more echoes of my screams,
no more bleeding from the shards of my broken dreams.
But it’s because I’m so broken
you love me now like a token;
so long as I leave unspoken
how I came to be
so jumpy and distrusting.
Should’ve died from the thrusting
and thrashing against
a reality too dense
to produce anything other than
the broken beauty I command.I could’ve been somebody who doesn’t fawn or freeze
at reminders of his insatiable greed –
but I’m not and I’m dreadfully tired
of being asked to put out the fire
in my soul, burned to ashes
from all the masses
of complicit onlookers, now
telling me to calm down
every time I flinch or wince or hold my breath;
like I’m scared to death –
because I was and I am
and I’m simply doing the best I can.flashbacks, grief, IFS, life, love, mental-health, poetry, ptsd, recovery, sexual assault, trauma, writing
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To the ones who should also be on trial
When I can’t figure out what to say
I try to put pen to paper anyway.
Because the truth of the matter is that
my silence only protects the man I used to call dad.No, these days we’re too grown to keep quiet
memorials buried inside me like a riot
that failed to ever organize and rise
up out of the tormenting lies;the ones he told me and so did my mother.
Family loyalty above all else and others!
It’s what keeps the immigrant family afloat;
we’re taught to never speak up or rock the boat.And on some level I get it to this day –
I’ll never know what it’s like to runaway
from a terrorist government right into familial obligation
to make something more of yourself than impoverished stagnation.That’s the story of the women who birthed me;
the one of the man who raped me is also key
because I’ll never know what it’s like to live under
my grandfather whose anger boomed like thunder.But I do know what it’s like to survive
violent attacks from the ones tasked at keeping me alive
and being told to hold dear all the terror.
Being youngest, made me especially the bearerof dark secrets turned pretty by all my compliance.
You see, my sister chose young the path of defiance,
but that only made her a perfect target.
We were fucked, no matter how you sliced it.I was too pretty, too docile and put together
for teachers, doctors, caretakers to bother
ever wondering if there was truth in my timid confessions.
They each chose instead to leave the learning of hard lessonsto the classroom of the violent home I could never escape –
the place where I learned that there’s no love like rape.
You see, it’s much easier when you hold all power
as an adult, hoard it up and completely devourinnocent brown bodies of forgotten children,
than step in and risk your neck to protect them.
That’s what they did to my little brown body
when they said bruises and fear weren’t inflicted by daddy.It’s such a chilling thing to think
that you could be so close, so just on the brink
of being saved from the stuff of pure nightmare,
escaping what most would never dareto imagine outliving, outlasting.
The most dreadful casting,
my family of origin, darker than I’ll ever bring to light
because nobody in this room could survive such a fright.But I did, and I’m fully enraged
by the ones who will leave here unfazed
thinking my story is unlike that of kids today-
after all, only demons could go so astray!But I’m here to call out your denial,
because the ones who should also be on trial
are not just the ones who birthed and raised me, their daughter,
but the ones who to help me just couldn’t be bothered.Take it from me, the pedophiles who could do
such unspeakable acts to my children and yours, too,
are the friends, family, acquaintances you collectively refuse
to without question destroy and remove.Instead, you place greater value
on keeping face and keeping dark what is true.
You remember the needs of the raper
before you ever believe children who cry danger!I cried a lot; I’ll be honest I knew from an early age
I’d die alone in that family, take our secrets to the grave.
So, I’m not sure now what’s more shocking –
that I’m alive or that I’m even up here talking.Because the truth is for most of us called survivor,
we often live on in the shadows of our traitors.
If we’re lucky enough to live past
the rape and bloody wounding we learned to outlastwe learn also that our bodies and words
are not worth protecting or believing anymore.
So, we stay silent; sometimes even caring for
the ones who gave us our unwanted violent lore.So, as unbelievable as it is,
I’m speaking now to tear down the myth
that terrors you’d rather not confront
if I may be so blunt
cause scars for which you are also at fault
there’s many ways to indirectly perpetrate assault.Because what happens when your refuse to say rape,
when you walk away from this stage in utter dismay
that a bitch so foul mouthed and enraged
would dare to so directly put on displayyour apathy, your inability to stand up,
to call abuse and violence in the name of love
exactly what it really is: no more
than the stuff of the rapists the came beforeyou, and me, and our grandparents;
the ones who gave us our legacies of violence,
the ones we pass on if we’re unwilling to look
into our own dirty mirrors and ask what tookus so long to see
that rapers like my father are no different than you and me
if we don’t unlearn that having power
is no excuse for causing those in our care to in fear cower.That’s right, if you walk around using intimidation,
leave your entitlement left unchecked cause of your station,
yours are the hands that help stow and carry
a darkness into the future we should bury.And if you’re one the few left still sitting here
refusing accountability, let me make it real clear,
the violence you let out lives on like an echo
every time you tell a hurting victim to just let it go.Maybe what we should start offering in its stead
are questions that with curiosity are led,
so that we learn how to help victims shoulder;
let the pain of others to us be the molderof a better version of our integrity;
let that be what guides our sense of community,
so that we stop building buldings that look so lavish.
Caring more for appearance is so fucking tragicwhen we’re called by creator and nature
to build futures free of unspeakable torture –
the kind that lies hidden beneath the facade
of all you’re primed to praise and applaud.You’ve lost your way if you think my plea is irrelevant.
We’re all guilty of excusing the violent
ways we put each other down;
it’s written all over this god forsaken southern town.My point in all this going on and on is to call
you forward with all the gall
I can muster on my first open mic night
and ask you simply to do what is right.Stop leaving the voiceless alone in their fight;
bring your own darkness into the light.
Lean into accountability
to walk and speak gently,especially to those in our care;
remove violence from all we revere.
Save retribution and unspeakable acts
for the fuckers who would rather redactthe flashbacks of those, who like me, made it out
despite turned backs and adults in power who doubt
that a child so tiny and pure
could be telling the truth of all they endure.Don’t be like them, so blind to your own blindness.
Seek above all else, parenting with kindness.
Leave bruises and fear for other makers,
lest like a raper you also be takerof what isn’t yours just because you carry the burden
of feeding and clothing small bodies called children.
Being mom or dad will never give you the right
to metaphoric or literally beat them into the desires of your sight.And if you’re childless still like I am,
you’re still called to be as defiant
and stand up to the terror of a culture that would
leave tiny victims to clean up their own blood.The way you help us stop repeating
a past filled with emotional and physical beatings
is vowing to be the one who separates –
no longer letting violence and love collaborate.I’m afraid I’m known for being long-winded –
character flaw gifted by blows from my kindred.
But I promise I’m almost done.
Let me boil it all down to onefine point.
Like oil, let me anoint
this simple and smart
query onto your heart…Ask yourself…
In what ways can I soften and slow
And in this way let real love out of me flow?
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There, there
Hey survivor,
don’t beat your-
self up for giving
him a few extra chances
to show
that he was better
than the men
you’ve known
in your nightmares.
There, there.
You’ll survive this one,
too.
Parker Stillwater 