Sweet Tea wrote 3 months after I turned 15, 2018


Before you, I was a girl devastated by things I couldn’t change
Trapped in an endless bitter reality from which there was no escape
Sinking into a dark, spiraling well, from which I reached my hands and found a pool of light
You were my light, a haloed sunshine angel, who graced me with his presence for what seemed so long and ended so abruptly
The sound of your voice seemed to be honey, so sweet, attracting the bees, attracting me
My sunshine sweetheart, angel lover You’ve done your time so now you can leave
Why would you want to stay with me? I’m only a cement brick that will bring you down
A loose thread that will tear you down, a yammering parakeet who will wear you down
One time you told me that I thought too  highly of you
How couldn’t I? With someone who made me feel so confident with my body, somebody who praised me, someone who thought I was worth their time at least for the time being
In a way it’s better that you left, you’ll never be forced to see what I had to see looking in the mirror hating every inch of myself, hating the way I acted, and the way I interacted with everyone and hating the way no one seemed to like me
But you liked me, but it’s better this way because I’m a letdown
It’s Like when you thought you had bought sweet tea
But it’s actually unsweetened



The new version
Sweet Tea wrote 1 month before my 18 birthday, 2021

Before you, I was a girl alone
Being molested every day by the people who said they would take care of me
I was a fourteen-year-old girl who was taught at a young age to get yourself a man to save you
So I tried everything to keep you because talking to you distracted me from the fact my fourty-year-old stepdad was touching me
But what I definitely didn’t need was a twenty-year-old man messaging me
Telling me all the things he wanted to do to me
When the law would finally unclaim me and allow me to give someone a part of me he doesn’t deserve
You made me feel so much more alone
Somebody who told me he’d touch me
But instead of giving me what I’ll need he’ll leave
“Lick me up like an ice cream cone” huh Luke?
yes I thought highly of you
Because you made it seem like you’d never hurt me
You were the biggest disappointment
You always will be

Seconds seem to last hours when I’m around you
It’s not a bad thing, it’s like the entire world stops and yields to our time
Like the hourglass freezes and it’s just you and me
Intertwined, slow dancing in the dark kitchen apartment
Trust in me because I believe in you
You’ve taught me there’s more to men than ruthlessness
You’ve shown me patience and gentleness I had yet to see to believe

I am only half yours
My lover
The other parts of me are in recovery
Healing
Please forgive me
Body
Please understand, love

The first time hit me like a fast-moving pickup truck
Speeding down the highway
I was always an obedient girl, I listened when I was told no
So why couldn’t he?
Pictures would show, adolescent depression
Fragile youth shadowed by absent lies
As my world caved through I believed in myself enough to write
I could never write in a diary or make things seem like they were about me
Him, me or him
Poetry saved me
I’ve never been able to write an autobiography
This may be as close as I’ll ever far
This is me
This is my story

Black nail polish
You’re a scream away from what you started
He wanted the flower girl you used to be
Years later you’ll dress like that girl
So angry at the world
Hopeless
I’ve grown from the anger
Now I sit in a field of lilies
And I don’t dream of what my life would’ve been like if he didn’t like flower girls
I’m comfortable in the silence that is now my brain
No more screaming

My lover has a scar
Just above her hipbone;
It's not a small ****,
a forgotten accident.
They're words -
Straight lines she etched
Deliberately,
Slowly,
Painfully.

I trace my fingers softly,
Not to wake my love,
But I can't soften their bite.
Words of cruel warning,
An order, imperative.
Commanding, even faded,
Echo a silent scream.

They mock me, mock us,
For they still have a hold:
She is only half mine.
They hurt me, cold,
Like unblinking eyes,
Knowing that she stares back
Every day.

I barely brush them,
Intruders on soft skin,
Indelible scripture
Of darkness within.

And they keep whispering:
don't eat.

It started again in July
The warm weather could never lift my spirits
As I have always been cold from the inside
Out, let me out
I’ve been trapped in a snowstorm since I was nine
Shivering in the warmth from the ice in my veins
The tsunami started in the school bathroom
After following my sister to the bathroom after dinner time
Night after night peeking through the cracks
To see her methods
The acidic volcano laid dormant inside me for a couple of years
Until I began to grow
Sprouting towards the sky like a sunflower
All I could think about was my waist
I hated it, I tried every method to destroy myself
And the monstrous overgrowth that devoured my forever changing body
Until one day I didn’t feel how hungry I was
The growling was silenced
All I could hear was her harsh voice droning me through
Take another step, don’t fall down
115 pounds of pure solid ice
The way down my throat is slippery
My fingers thin bunched together for the warmth that they could provide each other
Water is the only thing that comes out
The voice still haunts me
And somedays I wonder why my garden of a body had to be denied of sunlight
When I embraced the freeze
And hurled my body through
Body, I am so sorry