[...] and the greater the wound the greater the fang. And, when we experience trauma that is given to us by so many people, we find that we have become every one of them at once. In my body I hold every trauma. In my eye is all of theirs. In the eyes of God, I am an abomination.

Man like monster with
A mouth as a spinning wheel of hands/
Prey between teeth

One game of chess away from losing my
Mind/biting my head off

Man like wolf bleeding between gums
Man looking like both survival and the gun between it.
Boy looking like boy in mans body

Another poem about falling in love with dangerous people

Failing to see how they resemble every single red light you’ve ignored

Leaving home
On the plane
In the car to the airport

My blood cold, my gut sucker punched into submission

Could feel the well of grief somewhere inside of me
Like I would just
Sink
Sink
Sink
And never hit the bottom

A penny in a well makes a sound
The penny inside me finally drops

And I crack like a mule at the whip
Like birds at dawn or spring

Staying up so late I never dream

The part of the puzzle I get wrong is; fitting everything inside out and calling it beautiful/
He tries to put it back together but I tie his hands back with my tongue
Call it a game/

One where I’m safest where there are no hands
And eyes
To hold me to my promises
Love me into submission
My failed potential

The shame that filled every corner of my body
How it grew till it could not fit anymore

The year of empty
How it became a  larger and hungrier thing,

Larger than the men in my nightmares.

The silver we couldn’t melt, whispers over a fever and forehead.
When adults are talking you pretend you don’t understand

But you keep secrets locked up inside yourself

I still dream of war
Have never been on a battle ground.

They call it generational trauma ,

I say,

You don’t know the hand holding the gun to my head
What the trigger is made out of is my own flesh and blood

There are things I can’t speak of

Things I will not say but this:

I was wearing a ruffled blue top with a unicorn logo and jeans

I didn’t have any hair down there

Then I did

I liked how it felt

and then I didn’t

There is no place inside of me that can hold these two truths and not split wide open

Like a smile

Like a wound

Like the rabbit finally caught up

In the mouth of the thing.

Sixteenth of September,
six days after my sister was born
was the first time I remember it happening.

Body in my bed, I knew that was strange⁠—
I had always slept alone⁠—
but I didn’t know if it was wrong.
In school the next day
I looked around at all the girls,
I wanted to ask if this was normal.

I was twelve and I could not be sure
my body belonged to me.
I read horror stories,
compared myself to them and said,
you have faced a fraction of the full range.
I said, you were complicit,
he never told you to be silent.

I am seventeen still reading
article after article and I think:
my father is not evil,
my father does not deserve to be behind bars⁠—
who will feed my family?⁠—
but I think I would feel safer if he was.

          I think about one night
when he asked, “ does it feel good”
and I felt myself disintegrate.
I am not sure he heard what I heard:
does it feel good when I am making your body,
in which you will stand
for the rest of your life, unlivable?
Does it feel good when I am desecrating it,
when I make it unholy ground?

At the trial of our sins I will ask
God what my body is, and He will say
“it is a trust” and I will point to you and say
“then he has broken it.”

your filthy hands
           gripped on my jaw,
your grimy fingers
                      forcing my mouth open
                            treated like a dog who won't let go of a shoe
                       defiled
                  ruined
dehumanized

i was
    a little lamb
               and you were
                      a wolf in sheep's clothing
and when i trusted you
         you tore off your wool
                 and dug your claws
                                  into my flesh

i beg for air,
and you still wont let me go.

You planted a knife in me,
ten inches deep
almost a decade ago.

and I can't get it out.

you can only push it deeper.
and you still do,
without trying.

I don't blame you; the truth hurts.
Silence must have been better than admitting your son was really a monster.

Inferior. That's what I am compared to him.
He can do as he pleases while I am the mere thing he used for his own gratification once or twice.

But that's what happens when you give someone everything, and they degrade you after turning you into nothing. That's what happens when you're inferior. That's what happens to scared little girls. That's what happens when you're meant to fend for yourself. That's what happens, when from the start, you're nothing.