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: trauma
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This probably about you.
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
Parker Stillwater 