"I got down on my knees because he said I would
if I loved him.
And what did I know then?
when I first betrayed my body.
Sold it for a kiss and a smile,
thought to please at any cause,
left to fight for independence in the backseat of cars.
On stained leather interior dank with the smell of expectations
I traded integrity for security and called it love, leaving pieces of an empty shell falling behind my mother patting my head and saying
“What happened to that nice boy you were dating? ”.
Well, I pushed memories farther down
buried beneath piercing sunlight,
dreams my night would come to save
and prayed
scraping already skinned knees
while I cried myself to sleep.
So I bit the apple in confusion,
abandoned my innocence
beneath the tree of knowledge
and became as bitter as the fruit
I couldn’t refuse.
Time and again,
giving in,
giving up,
waiting,
always wanting something more than pick-up lines,
promising more than promiscuity,
clothing myself in false hopes,
enclosing my weariness in frail arms for years… Cars turning into bars with one lamp,
and piles of discarded clothing,
and I heard myself say “no” over and over.
But he didn’t hear me,
wouldn’t listen when he called me a “*****”, bringing me down and took the only innocence I had left.
And I was searching still for purity,
lurking in hidden corners,
hips swinging, lips pouting,
trading and shattered innocence
for bared and braised and offerings
I learned how to control
and three years of vengeance passed
while I was that woman despised.
Well, they begged for plastic perfection
found in the temptation inches from their faces and I could feel the longing,
the lies when they said “You’re so beautiful”
And it wasn’t enough
And so he loved music more than me,
loved work more than me,
loved money more than me,
loved her more than me.
And I loved him more than me.
And I gave in
to where I thought love hid;
to the times I thought it was real.
We give in to what men want,
we paint ourselves with what we think are the colors of the rainbow,
when we’re really cloaked in hips and lips,
the brutal realities that leave us grasping
tatters of the illusions of love and longing
and the shattered threads of innocence.
Until we wear our own colors
and part the curtains we draped over our mirrors in mourning
and look ourselves in and say
“With you I feel like Isis and I am beautiful”.
A poem I saw on Def Poetry that I will never forget, It was written and performed by Dawn Saylor .