1.0 i don’t remember what
i was wearing the day
i was sexually assaulted
and if small mercies exist,
sure that’s one of them?

i wish i didn’t remember
anything at all
like the smell of beer on
the two women’s breaths
or how it felt to
be forcefully trapped between
their bodies as they ground
down onto my 17 year old skin

not one other person
in that veritable sea of
drunk adults heard my
cries begging them to
stop, please stop
stop, i’m a minor
stop, you’re hurting me

and then to be called
a liar by the first person
i ever told
broke me even more
and i’ve got the scars
to prove it

like maybe if i
cut deep enough i
could scrape out what
left me feeling *****
and unclean and used up

2.
and the second person
i so foolishly told
sure that she of all people
would help me
called me a liar, too
though in a more drawn out way

“you’re being dramatic,
making this into something it’s not,
and you need to forgive them”

i sometimes wonder that
if i were still pretending to
be a girl
would people have believed me,
or would it have been worse?

would the ****** assault
have become less letters,
even though that “can’t
happen to men”?

3.
i don’t have answers
to those questions
but what i do know is how
murky the meaning of an
employer groping me while
neither of us is on the clock
truly is

to me, an action like that
like this grown man
old enough to be my father
groping my chest
falls into a gray area between
****** assault and ****** harassment

how dare he
violate me like that
with zero disregard for
my consent and ****** autonomy

and the irony of being called
a liar for being sexually assaulted
by the wife of the man
who sexually harassed me
years later is not lost on me
nor is it appreciated

adding yet more weight
to this trauma until me
knees buckle and my
fingers once again itch
for the blade

4.
i envy those of you that
have forgotten this trauma
of mine
and how easily you absolved
yourselves of any guilt for
looking into my flushed and
tear-stained face and
calling me a liar

i want to know how you
sleep at night
because i sure
as hell don’t

1.1.  i used to hear and see
things that weren’t there
but that all stopped the second
and final
time my mother kicked me out

funny how the brain deals with
years upon years of repeated
traumas, huh?

2. i was 17 years old
a month or two shy of 18
the last time i was sexually assaulted

i play words with friends against
one of the women that assaulted me now
and hate her for what she did to me
and the people i told that
should have helped me
but only called me a liar and
forced me to forgive my attackers

3. on that night
i cut my left arm to ribbons
and bled all over my desk
trying to get that feeling of being *****
and used up off my skin

i still ask myself
if i had still been pretending to be a girl
would people have believed me
or would that ****** assault
have been something worse?

4. i only remember my father
drinking when he had me around
old crow kept on top of the fridge
on the rocks
and a splash of warm water

that man who is
the other half of my dna
loved his **** grog more than
he ever wanted
ever loved me

5. you wanna know how
i got these scars?
and i don’t mean the ones
that were done by my own
trembling hands

the ghost of a child
still wails within me
never stopped being afraid
of those that were supposed to
protect me

6. the shadow of a young man
thin wisps of smoke
like the cherry of a cigarette
held against an arm
claws at this darkness
that only grew with me

i know perfectly well
which parts of me are
too broken to try and repair
the pieces my brain won’t
let me remember

7. and maybe that’s for the best
not having the words to explain
what was done to me
again and again

but that doesn’t satisfy
the hurt and anger
this brewing hatred
towards parents that didn’t know
how to be
and never really should have been

8. you wanna know how
i got these scars?
ripped out every part of
my parents that coursed through
all that red blood and blue veins

made a promise to that
scared little boy
still nestled against my ribs
that i would never be the
kind of monster a childhood
i almost didn’t make
it out of alive
wanted me to be

i grew tired of haunting
the girl?
that i used to be

banging pots and pans
in the middle of the night
so many sleepless hours trying to
find a name for what
for how
i felt

this was one waiting game
i was not willing to wait out
perched at the end of
my little twin bed
watching a younger version
of myself toss and turn
sweating out the nightmares

that constant question of why
and how long would this last
keeping my dentist in business
with all those hairline stress fractures
in my clenched jaw
teeth splintered into something sharper

but never sharp enough
to gnaw through the
trapped and infected limb
that was feeling stuck
in a body that was not mine
and maybe never had been?

i waited for that little girl
to wake up in the body of
a young man

i waited for her to
open his eyes in the
dawn of a new day
and be coming home
into this body
into himself

and i am so glad i did

i breathe life
into the distant ocean
and the green, green trees

these entities take on
shapes that only i can see
like lovers that are always
too far to touch

and how i long for you
standing on a sandy shore
rolled jean cuffs soaked through
with briny water
stuck to my skin with dried salt
and i want you to lick it off

i ache for you
want to feel rough bark
under my hands
the romance of tucking
a single dandelion behind your ear
and biting your bottom lip
in place of a goodbye

i long for you
like a tree sapling climbing
ever closer to the sun
like an old-timey boat
captain missing the swells
and breakers of the ocean

i long for you
and it kind of scares me
how big this want is
as i write you into
the leaves like they were the
first time i put on my glasses

like watching the ocean
recede into the distance
with salty sand under my nails
and in my socks
taking parts of you with me
like the comfort in knowing
i can always go back

the ocean calls to me
in a voice that sounds like yours
playful waves soaking the cuffs of
my tattered jeans

cold sea breezes kiss the
skin of my knee
through the patch you sewed
over the jagged hole
but even those stitches are
unraveling now

and i think i see you
out past the breakers
waving at me like we’re some
long-lost lovers in black and white
and i’m running after your train

but my well-loved boots
become too big
and the hard concrete rushes to
meet the tender skin of
the palms of my hands
of my exposed knees

impact takes my breath away
like when i saw you the first time
on dry land and sitting next to me
and i wanted to hold your hand
so much it made me ache

i want you
because i am a selfish human
i yearn for you
with the tenderness of a poet
and i will follow where
you lead me

out past the breakers
boot tracks left on the sandy shore
your siren song calls to me
and i answer every time

i remember the day
after you died
how the voice over the
intercom was choked with tears
and my heart caught in my throat

you were only a year
older than i was
and your soul was already
too big for your body

i immortalized you in ink
on my right shoulder
it almost made your parents cry
++++++
i remember the day
i was told that you had died
taken your own life
and the sun had yet to rise

it felt fitting
no bright light to
disturb the tears that fell from
my eyes and into my hands

and i think about you sometimes
like the smile you always shared
how easily you laughed
how that could have been me
that could have been me
++++++
i remember the day
that i read about how you had died
taken your own life
older than me but still too young

i never met you
but you found a place in my heart
and that spot still aches
sitting on my carpet
and sobbing until i gagged

it’s been a year
or maybe two
can’t say for sure but
i still think i see you
almost gotten off the bus before
and isn’t that something?
++++++
we were all just kids
if only for a moment
all growing in our own ways
and then you all just
stopped

i cried for you first
and then both of you
and i cried for myself

that could have been me
that could have been me
that could have been me

the blood in me loves you
and other sweet nothings
i can make real
simply by speaking them, lover

with your head in my lap
my hands in your long hair
and the night fraying at the
edges around us

giving way to dawn
for the second time
what a treat to watch it
become light once again
with you

and other sappy ****, too
because that’s what i’m good at
putting more poetry
and romance into whatever
it is we have

whatever it is
we had
than there ever could have been

and sometime it feels like
all that’s left between us is
an empty bottle of ***
two ***** shot glasses
and the shaking of my hands
the aching of my teeth

and what an ending that is,
lover

what an ending this is
giving back the time
i had tried to borrow
for us