I've never known love
Yes, I've seen the word everywhere
Seen others experience it
Yet I never have
But I thought I did

I mistook lust for love
And when he lusted over the innocence and
purity of my white rabbit self
I assumed that it was love
Because I'd never been loved before

And when I was younger
And he would always physically hurt me
His parents said it meant he liked me
My parents said that's just how boys are
So I assumed that it was love

And back to the first man I've ever dated
Though I don't like to consider him
When he pressured me into a relationship
When he was ten years older than me
But I stayed
Because I thought it was love

And then my freedom was taken for 768 days
Because they caught me talking to the man
I couldn't tell any of my friends
Any of them that I was groomed
Because I didn't know if it "counted" if it was online
I didn't know if it was love

I knew another guy at the time
One who knew my groomer
And I fell in love with him
I thought that I'd finally found love
But after he broke up with me
And crawled back eight months later
He admitted to talking to other people
In the whole sixteen days we dated.
I was partially loved for sixteen days.

And finally, in the spring
I met a third guy I told others about
But I wish I didn't
I asked him to ask me out
But he never did
He responded to my love
With jokes about ****
And sexist remarks, so I left

There have been many other guys along the way
With the two I've dated
One I talked to, one groomed me, one cheated

Lusted, but never loved
Just to fill in for someone else
And I hold my independence proudly
But I've had it ever since I was born

I've watched everyone else fall in love
Yet I watch from the sidelines
Wondering when I'll be loved
Truly loved
For once in my life.

he tore, he wore and ran to me, and tried to eat my brains

the sun and fun that came before, were drowned out by the rains

he left my guts spilling out and a hole inside my head

he left my heart spilling out and left me lying dead

the life that once was part of me had been turned down to scraps

it melted down and seeped out through the earth’s loving cracks

he crushed my light pink lungs and i gasped out a last breath

he gouged out both my eyes, now with the haziness of death

he threw my body to the lake but i floated to the top

blood spilled out of my body but i floated to the top

few citizens of the town saw me floating away that night

but they didn’t report the body, too much of a sight

they blamed me for the fact that i was there, floating dead

they assumed that it was me, with the hole inside my head

upon my blood full of justice, fully full of red

upon my eyes full of revenge, fully full of dead

When I look at the poems from my past,
Sometimes I smile.
Then I feel mad.
The age I was, becomes so apparent to me.

The younger version of me feels some kind of, well, something.
Each time I take a trip down memory lane
It's hard to not feel something when I remember the pain.

But when I look at the situation today,
After all that I've encountered...
Each stone I've flipped over, and
every waterfall I've checked behind,

I feel so mad at you.

Even the poems we wrote back and forth,
They're so childish, you reference cartoons.
I would have done anything for you,
You plucked me out of my broken world and threw me onto the rift.

I fell asleep at night telling myself stories about an empty apartment with a mattress.
It's so uncomfortable now to look back at.
The fact that you were the hope I had for my future.

It's not okay and I'll never stop thinking this way.

my simple response
“no.”
simply two letters
to your beck and call
is all it took
to immediately
come running back
to you.

it’s confusing to me
and maybe this is where
the grooming,
psychological abusing
comes from.
i’m used and discarded,
tossed into the recycling bin
until i’m reused again.
and again.
every time making me
a little weaker
than the time before.
a little less able to refuse.
a little easier to bend,
to break.
the lack of permanency
in the place i long for,
the place in which
i never got to stay for long,
only to be hauled away and
returned upon further notice.

Realizing the mayhem sprinkled into my past
has left such a sour taste with me
it's put my emotions on blast;
finally seeing what happened to me.

I'm beginning to feel better
after having picked out the reminders,
but the child in me is bitter
and wants to see them covered in spiders.

Sweet Tea wrote 3 months after I turned 15, 2018


Before you, I was a girl devastated by things I couldn’t change
Trapped in an endless bitter reality from which there was no escape
Sinking into a dark, spiraling well, from which I reached my hands and found a pool of light
You were my light, a haloed sunshine angel, who graced me with his presence for what seemed so long and ended so abruptly
The sound of your voice seemed to be honey, so sweet, attracting the bees, attracting me
My sunshine sweetheart, angel lover You’ve done your time so now you can leave
Why would you want to stay with me? I’m only a cement brick that will bring you down
A loose thread that will tear you down, a yammering parakeet who will wear you down
One time you told me that I thought too  highly of you
How couldn’t I? With someone who made me feel so confident with my body, somebody who praised me, someone who thought I was worth their time at least for the time being
In a way it’s better that you left, you’ll never be forced to see what I had to see looking in the mirror hating every inch of myself, hating the way I acted, and the way I interacted with everyone and hating the way no one seemed to like me
But you liked me, but it’s better this way because I’m a letdown
It’s Like when you thought you had bought sweet tea
But it’s actually unsweetened



The new version
Sweet Tea wrote 1 month before my 18 birthday, 2021

Before you, I was a girl alone
Being molested every day by the people who said they would take care of me
I was a fourteen-year-old girl who was taught at a young age to get yourself a man to save you
So I tried everything to keep you because talking to you distracted me from the fact my fourty-year-old stepdad was touching me
But what I definitely didn’t need was a twenty-year-old man messaging me
Telling me all the things he wanted to do to me
When the law would finally unclaim me and allow me to give someone a part of me he doesn’t deserve
You made me feel so much more alone
Somebody who told me he’d touch me
But instead of giving me what I’ll need he’ll leave
“Lick me up like an ice cream cone” huh Luke?
yes I thought highly of you
Because you made it seem like you’d never hurt me
You were the biggest disappointment
You always will be

In the months after your departure,
-heart wrenching for some, an exhale
of air after holding it in for too long
for me- I’ve been trying to crack you
open, like a mystery box, to discover the
unknown nature of your charms, compelling.

Were you appealing because you listened
to us? You listened to our low voices in a
society where we were belittled and silenced
into cooperation.
Coerced into leaving our sense of self behind
and following the norm, what is acceptable.
I saw right through you.

You planned this elaborate scheme and I
almost fell for it, I almost fell for your greedy
hands, promising approval, understanding,
a confidant like no other.
Making us think we were too mature for our age,
when we were just silly, innocent girls
craving recognition, just like any other,
wanting to be seen.

You fooled us into believing that you truly saw
us, but I noticed the way you looked at them,
They weren’t being seen in the way they
wanted to.
They were being looked at like just another
piece of meat.
You unclothed them with your filthy eyes.
Don’t you have any shame?

You even had the audacity to appear shocked,
even angry, when us, the ones that realized the wicked,
twisted game you were playing with them, gave you
the cold shoulder. We weren’t the stupid girls you
thought we were.

And all this time, I have blamed myself for not realizing
sooner, and when seeing what was really going on,
not speaking up.
And yes, I regret that, but I won’t give you the pleasure
of blaming anyone other than yourself,
of blaming myself.

After all, I wasn’t the one that looked and
touched them in inappropriate ways,
I wasn’t the one that whispered in their ears
drunk out of his mind,
And I wasn’t the one that earned their trust,
just to groom them.
In that story, I wasn’t the predator,
that titled belonged -and still does-
to you.