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Julia Betancourt Dec 2018
21
If only you knew how it felt-
That the few inches between us in the bed
are not something you wish to bridge.
You let them grow inside of themselves, instead,
Without lifting a finger to reach me,
Or turning a cheek to look at me.

It has been three months since I've disappeared
and you have not called me.
You have not thought of me.
I am a bleached memory that has begun to look
better washed out,
Like I was ***** before
When it was sore,
Like you were always on the edges of things.

If only you knew how it felt-
To see my eyes and not think of anything.
To not feel anything.
To be free from everything that encapsulates me.
Like I was ***** before
When it was sore,
Like the eyes didn't show anything more.

If only you knew how it felt-

Knowing that you don't love me anymore.
Julia Betancourt Dec 2018
They never love all of me.
Only some of me.
Julia Betancourt Nov 2018
They stopped killing us as slaves and started killing us as citizens
When citizens meant slaves but just to a different system
Because the system wanted to give us a taste
A whole new creation of black men and women who know the taste of bullets
Because bullets are the backbone of their existence
Piercing through their backs and their children's
Tell me you’re sorry but it has to be like this
200 years of slavery and we still live like this
I’m constantly asking myself when I die will I be anything more
Than a hashtag and a sweatshirt with my face on it?
Will I still be shackled to the blackness that’s been a magnet for ammunition?
A magnet for the hands that cuff me before I never made a bad decision?
A human designed for target practice?
Told to prove the way the world looks at me wrong
When the quality of my life has already been determined
When we’re arrested for crimes we didn’t commit and over packed into prisons
When the ghettos are already built so they can leave us to be deserted in
When my neighbor’s body is already laying in the street
When Trayvon’s already been dead for over six years
When Danye Jones is left hanging from a tree like from centuries ago
Told “Just don’t be Black”
Because being Black is a threat
You say you shoot to protect
But my people have been starved since the day we were stolen
Taught to work in the white man’s world but never to rise above him
Taught our culture is ugly unless it’s appropriated and copied
Upon this platform built on the backs of my ancestors hung like decorations
Do I know a single black body in America that isn’t scared?
Do I know a single black body in America that isn’t told by this country
Not to be Black
Because being Black is a threat
So you box us inside of a stereotype until we become colorless
Born into a cycle of fearing my life because you hate my skin
While white men are left free to Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, Parkland,
Orlando, Charlottesville, Kentucky, Charleston
Told not to be Black
Because the white man is the threat
They dig Black into our brains enough and they hope we forget
That George Zimmerman was found not guilty
Tamir Rice was less than thirteen
That being Black in America is the slowest genocide in history
To not breathe because they’d rather see us die of suffocation
Gentrification because we can't taste freedom
Because freedom tastes like lead casings
Freedom means walking down the street but not being able to do it after evening
Or anytime if it means wearing a durag or hood or black skin
Freedom means beatings
And freedom means bleeding
Bleeding until five officers have gotten enough kicks at Rodney King
Until Martin Luther King's killer feels like the dream has died with him
Freedom is bleeding
And freedom is - - - breathing heavy because I’m running and they still claim to be “policing”
They still claim to be policing
I’m - running and they still claim to be policing
I’m - - - breathing, I’m running, I’m bleeding
… I’m bleeding
Julia Betancourt Sep 2018
Daddy,
Can you tell I notice your hands are empty when you go to grasp Mommy's face?
Do you watch me see your eyes look passed her shoulder and never at her,
Like all of what is there are only left overs,
A broken soul erased after each night that you come home late because of "traffic"
Do you see her shrinking until she's bone and broken, broken bones
A skeleton in the dungeon of marriage
Faded into nothing but the silhouette of a woman
Do you see her?
Is she not pretty anymore, Daddy? Is she not pretty?
Does her face seem to droop when she walks into our living room?
Are you too busy watching television to know her nails are so short they bleed?
That last night she didn't eat,
Her stomach says she's feeling sick but by now it's been a week
Are you worried at all?
I've watched my mother shrink because a man thought he was too man to love her
Not man enough to love her forever
Now I am engaged to the reality that some women are fated to be thrown away or kept under the covers
My mom is a woman
My mom is a woman who has been pried open by her husband
Left to damage and to renew her vows to her own self destruction
I've watched my mother die inside because of a man who lies
I should have known as a 24 year old Marine you must have had a love for war
Then you brought it back with you and put it into your relationship, into your job, and into our home
Now 25 years have fallen and Mommy can't think straight anymore
Now I see her shrinking until she's bone and broken, broken bones
A skeleton in the dungeon of marriage
Faded into nothing but the silhouette of a woman
Her shadows on the walls are getting smaller
And her voice a lot quieter except for when you're fighting
And I ask you if she's leaving
You want to tell me
"Mommy does nothing wrong,
But Mommy is not enough for me and I’ll forget you remembered I said this when I tell you that I hope one day you’ll grow up to be like her,
I hope one day your brain will shrink so you think you need to settle for a man who will never give
I hope every inch of your being is ingrained and bestowed in his name
Then you'll realize the reason that I still come home and the reason that I pray are the same,
It isn’t because I know I did wrong,
It’s because I know I’ll always be forgiven
That’s why I tell you to always look out for Jesus because Jesus has always looked out for me,
When I felt her hair and body brushed up beside me,
Saw different colored skin on the bed sheets and forgot my own family"
Tell me why you did it, Daddy
Tell me why my mom is one of those women who will never feel worthy
Tell me why because she loved, now she's hurting
Tell me why when I meet a man who wants me I ask him which parts he would pick out of me,
Sew into another skin that may feel more meant to be,
May be more soft, maybe
Smooth instead of my roughness is way more pretty
Mommy told me better sewn, because at least then there's still pieces of me where he was stitching
But I'd rather be wrong for you, because my father taught me I can be a wife and you will still choose otherwise
Tell me why I am not right for you
Tell me why I am not enough for you
Tell me why my mother and I have shrunk until we're bone and broken, broken bones
Skeletons in the dungeon locked by the men who swore they loved us
Pried open by them after they promised they wouldn't hurt us
Faded into nothing but the silhouettes of women.
Do you see us?
Julia Betancourt Aug 2018
;
become one with pain,
and you'll live like me.
or don't,
and you'll die like me.
Julia Betancourt Aug 2018
I don't want you to search for why,
or how I could have done this at a time in my life
where I was so close to getting out.
The truth is that I will never get out.
I will never live a life where I am not in pain,
or questioning the meaning that I have in others' lives,
not wishing that I could drown in rain,
or questioning the meaning that I have in living out the rest of my life,
not wishing that I could drown.
Truthfully, it makes no difference.
It is like I am in pain but no one is listening.
Everyone chooses to close their ears and tell me, instead,
that it will get better.
I have learned and accepted my life.
I have realized that the rest of my life consists of one under the control
of a mental problem that makes everything feel like the end of the world.
That— every time something goes mildly wrong— I feel like I'm dying.
And when it's worse, I feel like I just might as well do it now.
Nobody can change or save me— no amount of love, or song, or piece of art,
or poem, or person— can help me hang on forever.
People are undependable, which is why, out of all things, it makes sense
why even I couldn't keep me alive.
You should never put your life in someone's hands, and I did—
I put them in my own.
I made myself keep fighting until I felt even the tiniest feeling of
purpose or passion, and I told myself that even the tiniest amount
of happiness was worth it.
But that's not how you would see it in a separate scenario.
You wouldn't tell me to keep myself in a relationship where the other person
only ever gave me the bare minimum, where they only made me happy
one day a week, in that minute where they made me feel worthwhile.
You wouldn't tell me to continue on through all of the feelings of
worthlessness and uselessness and insecurity because, that one small moment
where they make me happy is worth it.
You would tell me to find someone better.
You would tell me I deserve someone better. Then, I would try to find it—
knowing only way too late that I will never find someone that could
possibly give me everything I deserve.
Those people do not exist.
And for me, being alone has never worked quite well.
Because I get in my own head.
I think about all of the things I am not, and how I don't even care to fight
to become them. I just don't care.
I shouldn't have had to fight for this long.
But life seems to disagree. Life seems to keep telling me the battles
will not end, and I think it's the same for everyone.
I just think some people don't want to have to go through it anymore.
I just think some people don't want to not feel alive anymore.
Some people finally are honest with themselves and think, "Why am I doing
this to myself?"
It seems I do to myself what others do to me.
Except it's worse, because I am with me for the rest of
my life, and I can't get away from me.
Julia Betancourt Aug 2018
If love is an ocean, then I am the floor underneath it
Pressed down upon by miles of heavy sand and
the water that makes me drown

If love is a home, I am the ground beneath it
Too closed off to be nothing but imbedded in concrete

If love is California, then I am New York
Too far to be seen and two things that will never touch

If love is a well, I am the bottom of it
Too hidden in dark water that everyone drinks and chokes on

If love is this life, then I am barely living
Too much pain to feel alive
Too much feeling to feel different

If love is you, then I am me
Too much to be
Just too much

If love is a home, I am the ground beneath it

If love is a well, I am the bottom of it

If love is this life, then I am barely living

If love is an ocean, I am drowning in it
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