Scared.
If you rearrange the letters
You get
Sacred.*
Maybe fear is supposed to be something serene
Perhaps it is pure
So why am I so scared of sacred things?
A church
A bed
A school
All are supposed to be set apart
All are supposed to be safe
But I learned unspeakable things
In the back rooms of these places
That no one wants to discuss.
I am scared of sacred things
For all of these have been defiled for me
As a man has taken it upon himself
To break my hands and
To play God
To use me as his ****** Mary
I wish I understood virginity
As my innocence was stolen from me at seven years old
I am scared of sacred things
I bled from the inside out
I was no longer white washed
Blood and bile encased my soul
And a black hole swallowed it whole.
I am scared of sacred things
He left me there and knew that should I blame him
My religion would beg of me to forgive his sins
So I never did
Instead I blamed myself.
I only existed under heavy sheets
Only let myself feel in dark places.
I am scared of sacred things
White dresses
Fairy tale weddings
Boys who promise to love you
Men who lie about love
Monsters who don't know what love is
In the first place.

Your face is a mirage
When I am deprived of energy
Or water or sleep
You are who I see.
Your hands seem disconnected from your body
In the nightmares and hallucinations that plague me
Who are you, sweet tragedy?
My hands are evidences of your hands
And the damage they can do as
Your hands are stained with wreckage
Mine are covered in bruises
As they shake so cautiously
You are me
And I hate that we are the same
That the way you used me has made me
That the way you scarred me has colored me
That the way you broke me has molded me
Like clay between your sticky palms
I am a byproduct of your abuse
Of your horrible habits
I am one of your horrible habits.
You are every one of my worst fears
They all trace back to you
I am an endless cycle
And you were the catalyst
I do not hate you and do not want to
Because you are such an integral part of me
That while I want to erase it sometimes
To shatter its existence
I know that without it
I would also cease to exist.
You consume all of me
I let you define me for so long
I thought I had finally taken back control
But facing the inevitable is causing me to lose it
You are breaking me once again
And turning me into who I was never supposed to be.
Because now, as I look in the mirror
Between the cracks and water stains
The broken shards of glass show me
That my face is yours.

I see things inside my head
They come and go like snakes
So easily slithering through the dark and dripping places
Making their homes in broken ruins
Taking my heart and twisting it
Making my mind believe things that are not there.
People call me crazy
Try harder they say
Things will get better with time they say
They do not understand that
My mental illness does not have an on and off switch
A magic button I can press to turn me sane
As if I can pick and choose when my hallucinations color my mind
As if I can pick and choose when panic attacks destroy my sanction
As if I can pick and choose when depression rolls like thunder through my thoughts
My mental illness never came with an owner's manual
I do not have explicit instructions teaching my how to breathe
During episodes of PTSD
I do not have a special tool kit
That can cure anxiety.
I do not have a way to ward off these things that are imagined
But they seem more substantial than most of my reality
They are the only constant I've ever had in my life.
However, my mental illness is also not a whip
That I wear around my neck
Using it as an excuse to victimize people
Using it as an excuse to get preferential treatment
Using it as an excuse for you to walk on eggshells around me
I use it as a reason, not an excuse
For my thoughts, my behavior and some of my actions
But I refuse to let it take me captive
To yield to its thorns in my wrist
Or the acid it forces down my throat.
I am not afraid
And I will use it as my superpower
Rather than my kryptonite.

When I was sixteen,
My grandpa lost me.
Normally, people would say that I lost my grandfather
He lost me
The beautiful, articulate child
That questioned everything
Became stone.
And I was scared when I wiped away the fog
To see his lifeless eyes before mine
To see his burnt flesh in a perfectly polished box
And my flesh began to burn
My body began to incinerate
As my limbs were ripped from me
And thrown into the furnace
As the cavity was torn inside my chest
And fear became normal.
Now, I hear the song you used to sing to us during Christmas services
Like broken glass being dragged across my face
Like gunpowder ignited in my eardrums
Like a flood inside my veins
My hands are waterfalls that ebb and flow across your picture
And my tears are the bits of brine that hit the gifts you've given me
Now, I am preparing to face a new storm
When I talk on the phone with my Pop Pop
Who is sicker than my parents will tell me
I hold the floodgates closed with white knuckles
The drugs pumped into his system are a dam for his approaching torrent
Just as the lump in my throat is mine.
This Christmas is no celebration
As my one beloved grandpa is on Heaven's shore
And the other is crashing into the waves
That leave me drowning.
We fight off different floods
But he can only fight for so long.
Either way
Both will prove to be devastating.

I keep sleep scarce these days
Like a broach pressed against my chest.
It's walls collapse upon my lungs
Causing me to gasp with tight, choppy breaths.
Like the tide crashing up against my body
It tempts me
And then drifts back out to sea.
Nightmares of courtrooms and funerals plague my mind
His hands ascending in the dark
His face nonexistent
His heart similar to his face.
He is there
And then suddenly
He is not
He is a mirage
And I am in the desert
Faking my way through these delusions.
So I try to keep myself steady
By slumbering in small intervals.
Self-induced insomnia has never tasted so good
Cigarettes and coffee are my stimulants
Keeping my brain running
Like shoes hitting hot pavement
Until it's soft face meets the asphalt
And I can no longer continue.
So I stay there, knees ****** like the tattered rags of my soul
But I continue to tell myself that my bullet wounds are merely scratches
Maybe minimizing the monsters in my head will make then vanish
Maybe deflecting from the demons in my soul will make them scatter
Maybe telling myself that these tyrants are not here will make them go away
So I retreat once again
As I child wishes to shrink back into it's mothers womb
Into the night
Into the brokenness
Into the dark.

Some people define 'feministing' as
"Girl, you crazy."
"You really think you can change the world?"
"Tough ****."
Or
"Nobody's ever gonna love you"
"Because of your fat body and fatter mouth."
Well, contrary to your opinion
I am fighting to be more than just a body and mouth.
A body because men do not have the right
To use it as their own personal welcome mat
And a mouth because I refuse to swallow them up
To be an opening in which they find their home.
My mouth is for more than pleasing a man
My body is for more than pleasing his eyes.
'Feministing' is not me being hotheaded
Or hating all men
No, I hate the men who feel they are entitled to use me
Who feel they can retreat into my breast
Into my womb
As if to mimic their mother's
Just because I came out a woman.
I hate the men who derogatorily call women
*****, *******, prudes
Just because they have too much ***
Or refuse to have it with a particular person.
Just because you came out a woman
Don't you know that it is your sole purpose
To give up autonomy over your own body?
Your own body is no longer your own
It is a maple tree that lovers carve their names into
He scratched his name into your bark
Labeling you as his
Labeling you as the government's
Labeling you as someone else's
Because you, a little girl
A helpless woman
Cannot be trusted to know yourself well enough
To own yourself.
I hate the society that instructs little boys to be entitled
And teaches little girls that
Just because you have a body
Just because you are a woman
You are asking for it
Your cleavage is a stamp that says you want him
And should you say the word "no"
You are inherently leading him on.
Should you say "yes"
You are a disgrace
A pariah
An outcast.
You, girl
Should not be ******
You, child
Should not be independent
You, woman
Should not be.
How can I be?
We, women
Do not have the option
Our voices are lost in the static noise around us
We cannot live
Because we are systematically shut down
When we try to be who we are.
So, next time you complain about 'feministing'
Give me a feasible alternative
About how to be who I am.

My dad always told us things would be alright
He kept us in the dark for our childhood
Assuming his societal role as the protector
Covering things up with the blanket of his knowledge.

That is until
My grandpa went into open season, hunting down two consecutive strokes
Loaded gun ready to fire, cocked courageously on his collarbone
But not quickly enough to beat the savage beasts to the ****.
The condition destroyed chunks of his brain
Leaving him unable to breathe or talk
Which is the first time I've seen him speechless.

As I stood next to your urn
Imagining the dust of all your accomplishments, quirks, dreams
Tucked away in a perfectly carved mahogany box
Realizing for the first time that death was imminent
But still seeing how many metaphors I could come up with for this situation
That's deflection.

When I tell you I was molested for the first time
Breaking my teeth and nails
On each and every word that cuts bone like it is bread
And explaining to you that I help other people
But sparing you the details that make my body look crumpled and sickly
That's deflection.

As I discuss situations that have my knees ****** and scraped
That turn my hazel eyes to deep grays and black
That cause my systematic jaw to clench at the thought of my eating disorder
And others must pry it open with a crowbar
Yet, I still tell them that I am over it
So I do not have to explain her constant chokehold on me
That's deflection.

Now that my Pop Pop is ill
And Daddy, I try to be direct with you
"Is he going to be okay?"
Your response is always
"Well, he's not on his deathbed."
That does not mean okay to me
My grandpa was not on his deathbed until 20 hours after his stroke
But my grandma considered him dead at that moment
6:21 PM, Monday, March 24th, 2014
That's deflection.

I use the unknown element to distract people and myself
From the crippling fear that welds my heart with fire and metal
This anxiety is hellish
And panic attacks are called attacks for a reason
Because you can never win while in the midst of one.
But still I tell myself
And my father tells me as well
"You don't know for sure yet."
"Don't make problems out of nothing."
So I discount the pain that is a cavity within my chest
Rotting my body away with every passing second.
That's decomposition
That's a parasite
That's deflection.