Happy enough to dream you

Before I was scared that if I stared into his eyes
That I would be afraid again
That all my therapy and lessons I’ve learned
Would mean nothing and I would be manipulated once again
But instead, when I looked into his eyes I didn’t see the intimidating anger
The punishments, the fury
I saw a coward trying to scare me one last time
He looked really pathetic in his suit sitting next to his lawyer
Graying and thinning away
From the stress of his actions
I’m not scared anymore
I know what real love is now
I’m not alone anymore
And he can’t take anything away from me anymore

The truth about monsters is that they look like real people
They will disguise themselves as your uncle or your stepdad
Or your too-friendly neighbor, a wolf in sheep's cloth
They will ask you to come over, and you will without thinking
Because they just seem so nice
And you’d never expect something to happen to you
But as soon as the doorway opens and they get the first chance
They will bite into your skin, leaving deep scars to last you a lifetime
Blemishes you will have to hide in case someone will ask how you’re doing
Excuses he has made incase you shout
That it wasn’t him, he cares too much, why would he do something like that to you
When he is just such a nice guy
Nobody believes you at first when you tell on him for the not so nice thing he did to you
Because nobody wants to believe he’s a monster
Instead, they will cast blame to you
Well, why were you there? What were you wearing?
You must have done something, because why else would he want to insert himself in your life so much

Conflict in the weight
Conflight in the girl
Who just ate chicken
Too much chicken on an empty stomach
She gained two pounds
On a scale made for just right
No mistakes

Daylight breeches cowered mugshot eyes
Crackling lips, pop rocks turn tornado teeth
Leaving a disaster in its pearly white place
No one ever thinks the way I do
When I said no no one listened
Or stopped to think about how I was doing
Now I lay in this tomb unable to move
Dishes piling up higher than my mother’s withered expectations
Somedays I wish a magical creature called love would move my desolate feet
Commandments from a voice strong yet gentle
Carrying my timidness into another realm of being
Of being confident and peaceful

My mother's second husband gave her a fern plant when they got married
It was a symbolism of their love, my mother killed it in a couple of days
Because she didn’t want to put in the work of watering it
Or maybe she tried too hard and smothered it with affection
I can’t remember which because I was young
That fern heard many arguments while it laid wilting, forgotten
It heard the screaming, the mockery
The crying, “please don’t leave me”
It heard her using her children as shields against her angry husband
To protect herself from the screaming agony
Pitting red balled fists against the whimpering adolescence
While my mother huddled in a corner out of her body
The fern rotted for weeks on our front porch
No one to check on it, to see if it was still breathing
To make sure that everything was okay
It wasn’t, the love fern was dead
Maybe it could’ve been happy if it went to a different family

Late night on the phone
But he never seems too far away
My heart tears in agony
Softly screaming
The sound of his voice is reassurance
He’s here
My heart is jumping again