To choose my own life
meant releasing myself
from his grip. The one
unholy touch I'd ever
known. If he had not
caught my scent, then
maybe his hand would
never have reached me.

To say ****** abuse
is to say I was not quite *****.
There is some dignity
I can still hold onto, a weight
I never felt threatening
to crush my body
into the dirt.

To say I am woman
is to say he is animal,
to deny him the right
of remaining ******
from the stink
of his mother's womb;

to insist on calling myself woman
is to forget the terror of knowing
I was child, I was bone
and I was sacrifice, the flame
on my tongue had scarcely
scorched his teeth before
they closed in on me
to drag me down.

To say I loved him
is to puncture holes
into my pelvis, let the marrow
drip until I was unrecognizable
as human, only a
thoughtless brainless creature
could love the knife
as it ripped them apart,
to save the hawk who grabbed you
from the river by feeding it one
of your young,

to say I was too young
is to say it gets better with age,
as if the signs become easier
to recognize once the baby fat
has shed its protective casing
from his skull.

To say depression
is to say I wasn't born
this way, there was a disease
inside his bloodstream
that erased me, it was
something from his veins
that made the doctors
hover over my wrists
like vultures waiting
to snap me up whole.

To say victim
is to say there was a perpetrator,
is to say our love was crime,
is to say there was nothing holy
until I learned to make it so myself.

To say ****** abuse
is to say *he has taken everything,
there is nothing left of my frame
for anyone else to hold.