When I was born - mother collapsed
then she got well - never came back

Daddy was gone - most of the time
when he returned - we were attacked

Sister was told: "Feed her or else!
Mix it up right.  Keep your trap shut!"

Daddy got poor - sold me for food
babies were best - earned the best cut

As I grew more - daddy was rich
hooked on the sale - power it brought

I wanted out - pleaded my cause,
he forced me down - never was caught

eleanor-prince

hidden crimes

Jun 6, 2026

June 2026

2026

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removed.-vlgx

I have been trying to be more aware of others hidden challenges and up bringing. The poem is intense but so simply expressed. I helps people like me experience a tear drop of what you have experienced. My writing Moving On was a bit more real...I tend to keep it in. You did a great job.

Shell

Wow, this hit me hard. You brought tears to my eyes.
Very touching. A child in pain 
Is something that we can&#8217;t allow . &#127808;

Maddypb

South-by-Southwest

removed.u685248

This broke my little heart. My husband was raised in an alcoholic home, a father wanted to be the big shot, spending money buying rounds for entire bars as his mother had to go door to door begging for just a little milk, each neighbor giving a cup or two until she filled a 2 gallon pail. Living on The Prairies there were many farmers, and she found one at church that donated as much wheat germ as she needed. My husband Napayshni says until age 7 all he remembers eating except on special occasions was creamed wheat germ, cooked in a big cast iron pot over a barrel that burned collected leaves from back alleys as the power and gas were off most the time in the summer, his father giving money away, sometimes with grace to those who needed it, but ya gotta share what ya got, but keep what ya need, huh? But mostly it was to be the big shot, or trade the money for house bills on yet another handful of magic beans that would fix everything.

He was raped two men at 11, and only one, and only years later, was convicted and send to prison. He got his phone number in a way that could have sent him to jail, he got a job at the phone company just to get the number. He just asked one question without anger, "Why?", and the man though it was safe, he'd paid his debt as society saw it, but he denied every raping him. He took his old service pistol, a 9mm Beretta,, and a baseball bat, and duct tape for the man's silence, for through the database he knew the address.

He drove halfway to the city the man lived in, a perfectly planned crime, he had deleted the access records so the crime could not be traced to him. He planned a slow death, first breaking every bone starting at toes, moving to skull, slowly, with much time between every bone broken, he knew how to inflict maximum pain from his time as an overwatch sniper lent to special forces and CIA team, he had no choice in witnesses the worst in mankind, and he remembered the worst of the lessons he learned.

But he stopped, he couldn't go on, and he grabbed his pistol and ran out into a snowy winter's field, dropping to his knees, and cursing every curse he could come up with on Creator until his anger was emptied, and his revenge stifled. Many year later he would become friends with a woman who was friends with told of how horribly abused his assaulter was every day in prison for 10 years, the guards turning a blind eye. Every day of his started with every prisoner on his block having defecated in a single toilet, and the man, Jack Hethington, being literally drown in shit until he lost consciousness, was beaten awake, and drowned, and that done over and over. And that was just the start of everyday, he was out-and-out tortured.

He took such a delight in hearing of his kidnapper and rapists pain, imagining over and over with relish. But on the third of that he suddenly had Creators speak to his mind, body, heart and spirit all, and he became sickening in and with himself. And forgave this man finally, and that was the start of a long healing journey that he still is on.

Me? My parents both committed suicide together, hastily planned I believe, because it left me alone with their bodies in a house with no electricity for many days in the middle of a hot July. At first I sought comfort from their bodies that were now empty shells, but their skin turned jet black, started to rot, and swelled up with gases, their thighs splitting open, terrible things that happen to a dead two-leggeds body after death, so I tried to approach the bodies for comfort, but I couldn't stand the smell.

It was a week of true Hell. I drank water out of the toilet, ate what food I could, and my auntie thank You Wakhan Tankha, she come by for a visit and found me. I went inside myself, I was conscious but become a creature of pure intellect, emotion, and spirt, the trauma so great to my little mind that I was completely cut off from my sense, unable to see, to hear, to feel, to taste nothing, just my mind and heart and soul floating in a black void, but not even black, just a universe of nothingness. I lived in that world called a dissociative break leading to catatonia for over 4 years. During this time my grandfather (I was given to the care of grandpa and unci, that is, grandmother) sexual molested me, and then I woke up, and got a break from the abuse, I went to boarding school from September to May, but the abuse continued, becoming rape as I grew old enough that he could squeeze himself into me.

I ran away at 14, and have lived as a home-less heroin addict, and a prostitute, alway running from the pain and myself, knowing where to go never the problem, the problem being always where to stay. I came to the city where my husband lives, my cousin killed herself four months pregnant with their child in 1999, the same year I almost killed him intentionally pushing him off a 12 foot structure with him landing on his head, hugely damaging his dominant side of his frontal lobe, he just last week had an incident that caused 3,000+ cerebral hemorrhages, microbleeds they call them, that as they destroy his speech centre, rational thinking, and quantitative and analytical thinking, the non-dominant part of his frontal lobe becomes stronger, with a flowering of his creativity, his imagination, is intuition (what he calls his "CZ gut check", his combat zone gut-check, his curiosity about everything... one strange thing, he can't spell English, every word needs the speller checker to correct, but his is learning again my language... our language now, Lakhotiyapi, it seems his irrational mind is learning the language even as his rational mind is losing English, and he loves writing stories and poems, especially here at Hello Poetry, so he is grieving losing his ability to write, forgetting his vocabulary and even the entire lexicon of his English words, it taking him sometimes 5 minutes to remember a word like "people" or "house". And though I was only three, it is all my fault. We speak much Lakhotiyapi as my recently passed auntie was teaching him the language, and that at least is a big comfort, he will always be able to communicate with his wife at least, and I have promised him if he forgets English I will translate his poems from our language to English and always post them here. I've done a couple like that already.

Every losing his language, his musical and artistic ability have grown immensely, if only he could condense his ideas, but his poems, aiyyyyeeeee, they would give Wordsworth a run for his money, one I read which was brilliant and engaging, but it was 54 pages long, no one wants to read  something that long (except his dear poetry sister, Biche, she always reads all of his scribbles). As we record cover songs he is writing originals and we are going to record entire albums, shooting videos for each, just for us, never to be shared. It is giving him purpose again after being on disability for 6 years and just waiting to die.

So all that complaining was not without purpose, it was to let you know dearest one how very deeply your poem stabbed into both of us like a dagger would, but a hurt that left holes in our hearts where the pain could escape from. Bless you for that, bless your writing.

stephen-e-yocum

Hard bitten and sad
but so well written.

nishu-mathur

This is moving to read. Very sad and a brutal reality.

wendy-ronshausen

Heartbreaking, touching write. Makes me dream I could have changed this life!! ((&#9825;))

sheila-haskins

So terribly sad. It's true for so many, bless you for sharing

NevilleZ

weeping-willow

frances-e-mcclelland

Powerful and heartbreaking, eleanor. The story resonates with more people than we realize ! Blessings, Frances

SCHEDAR

removed.Manuela

Floren

I am so so sorry. Words are not enough. You have my heart, and you have my prayers. You are not alone.

christopher-victor-russon

Lovely poem indeed  So many untold stories behind closed doors

kenpepiton

I hope this is confabulation, I hope you never had to learn this stuff raw first hand, hard enough, just knowing it happens.

cj-sutherland

This phone speaks more between the lines. It leads you to imagine the worst.well done