Is there no ounce of passion left within me?
Was it accidentally drained out of me when all of the emptiness was unmistakably filled up?
I don't feel it as deeply and as excruciatingly as I did before
I almost don't feel it at all
It feels absent
Lacking
W  a  n  i  n  g

During the days of the horrid drought
When the pain and the loneliness were so
Heavy, endless, and dry
It was my passion alone that kept me holding on
It was the only thing that forced me to keep living
The one and only good thing that was static in my life

I don't feel that anymore
All I feel is apathy
******* apathy

Was I stronger then,
Than I am now?
Or is it the contrary?

I feel less fragile, less breakable
There's no more sign taped blatantly to my forehead
Screaming, "VERY FRAGILE: HANDLE WITH CARE"
And there's no more drought

But did the passion get lost along with all of the emptiness?
How do I know?
Where is it hidden?
*And where can I find it again?

Sometimes I dream of scratching and digging viciously at his skin
As if I am trying to take back what I lost inside of him
What he tore away from me without my permission

Four years later and
I still cringe

He was so many firsts
First boyfriend
First 4 hour phone call
First person to see me naked
Undeniably bare and fresh and perfect
My body like an untouched lump of clay
Waiting for his hands to twist, mold, and taint it
First relationship
First time my body was a scale
He was so much weight

He never stopped
Especially after he would hear me utter “no”
He took away so much of me

Compromise was turning off the lights
Shutting my eyes as tight as they could go
Until it was all over
And I could breathe again

What was it that coerced him to finger me under the blanket in front of my siblings?
What was it that compelled him to ignore all of the no's?
What was it that drove him to take me upstairs to my bed while my own grandmother was just a room away and ****** himself inside of me without my consent?
What was it that made his hands cause every single centimeter of my skin to flinch?
Will I ever be forgiven for the sins I did not commit, but unintentionally created?

After it happened
My sanity seemed to be a balancing act
I felt like an old, empty museum
An eviscerated monument
Something that used to hold so much worth
Something that was now meaningless
Futile
And
Disgusting


Shortly after, denial surfaced
It took over and replaced my name
Every single minute of every single day
I was telling myself over and over and over
That it never happened
All in an attempt to make it go away
Doing everything I could to prevent myself
From ever admitting it
Doing everything in my will to forget
But failing so miserably

I called it an armed robbery
As if he could bust through my chest
Tear open my ribs
And steal everything that made my heart dance
And then nail its wings to his filthy trophy wall

For a long time after 
I was careless
A fallen angel
Looking for love
In the same way in which I lost it
Looking for love
In the same way in which I got to know pain and hurt intimately
It was a continuous game of innocence being lost

I was a lost and forgotten treasure
Living in a garden of destruction
Scared and ****** up and doing everything that I thought I needed
Thirsting for all of the medicine that I thought they had

I was stuck in the greatest darkness of my life
As I tried to convince myself that the men I met along the journey
Were my only light
I couldn't help but to seek safety in other people
For it was in another person that I lost all sense of my own security

I was someone who belonged to no one, who belonged to everyone
There was constant bloodshed in my head and in my heart

So I did the things I did hoping I could make it all rewind
Go back to the very first day when I wasn't strong enough to get up and leave
After all of my thousands of insistent no's were intentionally ignored and thrown aside

I was disgusted with myself
Constantly putting myself down
Tearing myself apart
From the inside out and the outside in

Most days I would feel ***** (somedays I still do)
Contaminated
Defiled
Repulsive

It was hard to keep praying to someone who had me on hold
When all I wanted was for someone to hold me
Or at the least,
Something to hold on to

I think back and can't help but recall
How difficult it was to breathe in public

I felt hardened
I wanted someone to tell me that it wasn't my fault
To remind me that life is suffering
And existing is a coincidence
And that I am only a witness to half of it

I suppose that intimacy is the art of licking wounds
Because it has taken me years to let anyone kiss me
with my lips chapped
and my body tense
my eyes flitting
and my heart hiding

Four years later and
I still cringe

My father is always talking about how strong I am
He is so proud of my resilience that it sometimes makes me uneasy
He loves to brag about me to other people
Saying that I am capable of anything and everything
All because of everything I have been through and all that I have overcome

But the thing is
He doesn't even know half of it
He has no idea about what happened four years ago
About what continued to happen after that day

Now that time has passed
And I have finally healed (somewhat)
There's no denying that a part of me
Will always ache and burn because of this
But I have realized that
I am not the one who is broken
He is,
The monster who did this to me

And nothing has been stolen from me
Because my body is not a castoff
And there is nothing that sits inside of me
Bearing my worth

There is no trinket that can be seen
Touched
Or taken
****** from my stomach
Only to be left somewhere on the concrete
Or buried deep within a dumpster
And lost forever

Yes, something was seized from me
That I will never get back
But I refuse to watch myself collapse

I have heard that one in three women will be
*****
Or sexually abused
In their lifetime

Well,
I am one of three daughters

Four years later and
*I still cringe

I put my retainer in; only hoping it would straighten things out. Good luck, love. You're too complicated to be set straight. You're not concrete. You're distant. You live your life like you have headphones in, watching everything without the proper sounds; you listen with your own soundtrack. This fake silence speaks to you. It's your only safety net. It's the only way you feel truly alive and normal. Although you try and avoid normalcy as much as it's humanly possible… Although I find it quite ironic that I used the word "Humanly" because you don't strike me as human at all. You're not like other people.

You actually believe that you need others more than they need you. You search for affection, for stability, for acceptance. You're just a shell of the girl you used to be; troubled and messed up and lost in this sadistic world. You don't know what to do with yourself. What is there even to do with a girl like you? Do you know that you block people off? You don't tell anyone anything sweetie. You just keep to yourself, hide everything away in a little box in that extravagant but strangely complicated mind of yours. No wonder you thirst for affection so much, no wonder you don't have any.

But what I don't get is that you sit there and think about how much you want to talk to people and speak your mind but you don't. You're too afraid of being scrutinized even more than you already are. Because you can't take that you're even stereotyped and scrutinized in the first place. You can't stand that. So you believe it's better to be miserable in your own mind rather than publicizing it all over the place. You'd rather keep it to yourself and wear a mask that says, "There's nothing wrong with me, I have every reason to be happy, and I'm just tired." When the truth is, you believe you have no reason to be happy, there's too much wrong with you to even try to deal with and fix, and you're more than tired, you're exhausted.

"Why is life like this?" You ask yourself over and over again. Always searching and searching for answers but only finding more and more questions. You're always left unanswered; you feel worthless, forgotten. You believe that you're just in everyone's way, that everyone would be better off if you just didn't exist. And you constantly find yourself wishing something horrible would happen to you just so you can have a reasonable and legitimate excuse to be so depressed. So you wouldn't have to wear that **** mask of yours anymore. If people only knew.  

But because of who you are, you push people away. And you allow them to get to you and hurt you. But do you realize that it is your fault for all of this? It's always your fault. You're unstable and prone to trouble and terribly unlucky. You're not fixable; you're just not good enough.

People don't realize the type of person you are. You come off as ungrateful and spoiled and angry and so many things that you're not. You just cover everything up with these negative behaviors and emotions. Which makes no sense, but I know you can't help it. Your eyes don't need all the sadness they have seen. You are a good person; at least you try to be. You're humble and understanding. You feel so much for others and you have the ability to understand them so well. You do things for others that you know they would never do for you. You find yourself criticizing only you, judging no one but yourself.

But your own expectations for yourself are impossible to live up to and you don't realize that. You don't believe in yourself... it's a wonder you have the capacity to believe in others. But it doesn't surprise me that you find it so hard to let yourself fully love other people. You don't love yourself. That's your issue. You can show love for others and be loving towards them but you can never get to the point where you can fully love someone. And you wonder why. It's because you don't love yourself. You like to convince yourself that if you write and think beautiful thoughts than everyone will love you. Too bad no one knows you write and think. And too bad you don't think any of it is beautiful either.

You're just paranoid. You have this weird fear of growing old. You're not afraid to die, you're afraid to grow old. Lose your most prized possession-your mind. Maybe that's why you're so reckless and don't care about anything you do or anything anyone else does. You might as well die young rather than waste the rest of your life being miserable and unhappy. I mean life just gets boring after you're forced to grow up. You lose your freedom.

But don't ask me, I don't know anything.

Rubbing our fists in our eyes
Until we see nebulas and galaxies
Our raptures
They are either all air or all fire
That certain madness we contain
Which rightly dominates
Our poetic brains
Shoving our thoughts back down
Our throats
Which always seem to surface
On paper later
Wandering off the edge of the world
Our hearts
They burn and destroy
Our words
Run down from the tops of our heads
And out from our thunderous and beating hearts
Often times
Our shadows
Seem more real than our distant bodies

And so again,
With these words
A tiny place we call sanctuary
This moment...
Like some great redemption