There are parts of me I have yet to become acquaintances with,
Flesh,
I have never stroked with my fingertips
Like the sinner does when he's lonely and makes the Holy Bible his lover.
A bible that only sees the light when his world is crimson, going down in flames.
I can feel the presence of opaque shadows lingering in my head,
The fog is still too thick to see the edges of his face,
But the smell of whiskey still brings me to my knees
Like the sinner who sees scarlet flames every time he looks at his palms.
He reserves his Sundays for prayer.
My reality is seven-thousand ghosts chanting the same sermon against the walls of my anatomy, begging God for truth.
Pressing against every curve, sending shivers up my spine because it strikes a harp I've heard before.
White wallpaper, silent whispers, a ripe peach.
The clock on the wall strikes one-twenty-seven, the moon cries for help.
The sinner has just come home.
Whiskey entangled sentences, blurry vision, loose hands.
In the shadows, his palms reach for change in the fountain of youth.
After all these years, I'm still picking up the dimes he dropped on the sidewalks of my life.
I see orange in stranger's irises,
My surroundings become dark, humid spring days whenever I smell whiskey.

I wonder if he used it to set flames to my anatomy.
I don't know how to extinguish all of this smoke, but I can't see straight, I'm choking on all of the memories faded into the monochromatic sky.
I wonder if there's a prayer in the bible that paints my face across the canvas of his mind.
I'm still picking up the glass fragments of this shattered life.
Cutting my hands while putting the mirror back together.
Trying to see into myself, into the sad caramel eyes staring back at me.
Thick smoke, crimson flames, shadows dancing.
Ghosts screaming, blurry vision, dimes scattered across the floor.
I fear for the day all these faded sins become friends of mine.

I am not a landfill for
Insecurities
I am not the void to repair
Damaged masculinity
Yes, I am a woman
Comfortable with my sexuality
But, aren't I supposed to decide
When i want that kind of intimacy?
Everyone's got their demons
I'm always the dirt beneath their shoes
As the climb from the pit
I want to be more
I want to be whole
I want to be strong enough
To stop it when I say no
**** is a four letter word
I wish I didn't feel it in my bones
When the one I loved hushed my cries,
I said no

if every year of my life
were a chapter
and I could only remove one
from my story:
I would tear out chapter 14.

I would rip all the pages,
mutilate beyond repair,
shred. Shred shred shred
burn burn burn until
nothing was left but ashes.

14, when I was naive.
14, when I thought kissing a boy
would make even me think that I
was straight, 14
when a hot summer event suddenly
burned me hotter than the sun
ever could, because
at 14, a boy I called friend
didn’t listen.

14, he’s in my house,
14, he’s in my room,
14, he’s on top of me,
14, he’s forcing his way in me and I…
I am telling him to stop.

14, my cries go ignored,
14, he’s stronger than me,
14, my parents aren’t home,
14, I didn’t tell anyone he was coming,
14, he could hurt me if I run,
14…where would I even run to?

Shame; Shame because 14
is the story of when I said stop…
and then stopped trying to stop
what I wanted to stop and had asked
for to stop in the first place but
he did not listen to the word
‘stop.’

14, when fear paralyzed me.
14, when what was less than an hour
felt like a lifetime. 14
was crying when he finally left,
14 was seeing blood and knowing
it wasn’t my menstrual cycle.
14 was when my whole life
changed.

In chapter 14 I had innocence
stolen. In 14 I started high school;
where I had two classes with him
everyday.

14 was acting like it was fine,
I was fine, it was all fine,
until it wasn’t, and
14 was police reports and questions
and being accused of lying,
14 was “He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
But we are chapters away from that now and
justice has never once been applied, and
he roams free and
I still feel trapped under his body.

Chapter 14 would be entitled
“****”
and I would erase it from my story
if only such an action
were possible.

(d.d.b)

mother cried
because she was beautiful
her daughter,
the placid girl.

she cried,
because the men wanted her,
yet could not love her.

as millions plucked
flowers for their beauty,
then threw them to pavements.

they touched her,
because she was beautiful.
they defiled her.

they ripped the petals
from her throat,
and left her to wither,

a rose on the sidewalk.

I can hear them now,
"Get off me, get off me,
Poor creature, poor creature,"
I have arrived at an impasse.
In what kind of world
Will justice be served
Based on the hem of my skirt;
In what world be it served,
Based on the drink in my cup?
I speak not on the forked tongue
Of a miserly bedfellow,
But on the wings of a **** moth,
Gorgeous and pale
And fragile and small.

I may be a **** moth,
But they named a war plane after me
For a **** good reason.

What is justified about you sitting there,
the devil's grin on your face,
when she is crumbling to the floor?
You touched her, moved her, forced her.
Now, she's gone.
She spelled it out for you
but your illiterate limbs moved on anyway,
and now her heart is disintegrating
from the horrors you put her through.
How did a boy like you ever
deserve a woman like her?