It didn't start with blades,
It started with panicked hands of third grade,
going into my mouth,
To rip my teeth out,
a mute daughter,
not even wanting her compassionate and loving father,
Just waiting for the day,
To take her pain away,
And see he would be the one to find her body,
at the bottom of the deck she leaped to the ground from,
but she saw and heard his tears,
watched him carry her up the hill,
watched her daddy take her to the hospital,
to be relived to see she had a broken leg,
and to think it was an accident,
and she fell,
the daughter felt well,
but she still had a problem she couldn't fix,
and that was living,
and her mother,
who yelled and yelled,
that was the winter the girl stopped eating,
that was when the hospital became a second home,
the better parent of the divorce,
she got out of school,
for being a wrack,
looked so sick like she was a corps,
she was though,
he mother still hated her,
her daddy still prayed for her,
all because the school let everyone pick on her,
the students,
the teachers,
no one gave her any relief,
and neither parent could seem to get,
that there daughter was getting beat,
but her mother thought the way to deal with things,
was to hit,
and the girl learned that's what happens,
when your bad,
to the people you love,
and all she saw was how she hurt her daddy,
but she thought her mom deserved to get hit too,
because she didn't do anything but argue,
years later the girl got older,
got over these things,
thought things would be better,
she was still hurting herself in so many ways,
she met a boy,
who treated her with nothing but love,
he took her for a walk down her past,
made her want to love him,
like she never could love her parents,
she let him do what ever he said,
he hit her,
sometimes she would hit back,
like she always wanted to do,
but she learned quickly,
it would only make things worse,
to her this was normal,
at home,
with him,
nothing was wrong,
til the day he forced her to be naked,
tricked her,
with his little charm,
made himself seem like he cared,
said things no one ever had,
and then ****** her,
with no care,
no matter how much she cried,
no matter how much she was already crying,
he didn't care,
but she though he did,
she though this is what happens,
and let it,
with out speaking,
like old times,
she eventually left him,
over a fight he had with her in front of her friends,
she didn't figure out what he did was wrong,
what her parents were doing was wrong,
how this all made her personality disorder worse,
how what the school had done was enough,
and this put me over the top,
I broke down,
threw things,
I have never thrown things,
and this person sat there watching me,
freak out,
and I cried,
and cried,
ripping my hair out,
bitting off my whole nails,
and it wasn't Until I grabbed a pen from her desk,
that when she got up,
to call me an ambulance,
and I drew on my arm,
every ones name,
of people who had been doing these things to me,
and I filled both arms,
I took the pen,
and I sliced strait down once on each side,
laid down,
and cried,
til they too me away,
and then when they came to see me in the ER,
I couldn't remember what I had done,
And she showed me,
A security copy of my panic attack,
and I cried,
because that wasn't the me I knew,
and she pronounced,
I was suffering from so very extreme,
Post Traumatic Stress,
Or PTSD,
and I looked at her funny,
because I had never been in war
and she giggled,
almost ****** herself laughing,
and said,
soldiers aren't the only one who get it,
and we can talk more another time,

friends to acquaintances
together to alone
comforting streams to open oceans
warm flesh to rotting bone
from bed to soil
from earth to unknown
what will you say
when i lay in a place no longer called my home
but a graveyard
of silence and of stone

a stranger in a holiday card
voicemails become mementos
my laugh an ancient folk song
and the poems will attest to those
for the words shall live on
through dusk onto dawn
they will merely curve to your interpretation now
the neck of a swan