Don’t you dare tell me it’s love,
don’t you dare tell me it’s “just life”,
when you’ve never carried the weight of choice,
when you’ve never had hands force themselves,
when you’ve never looked at your own body and felt—
disgust, betrayal, rage—
for something that was never yours to begin with.
You’ve never been thirteen, shaking in a cold clinic waiting room,
heart hammering with fear that the world will hate you,
body carved open by guilt, by doubt,
the shame tattooed like a brand on your skin.
And you think you know what love is?
You never see the hidden scars,
the marks left by hands uninvited,
by voices saying “boys will be boys” while my voice is silenced,
a whisper swallowed by the same mouths that judge me
for what they took.
Is that justice? Is that your idea of freedom?

You sit in leather,
sign your names on paper
that ultimately becomes chains,
binding bodies you will never know,
dictating futures you will never know.
you preach protection,
you wrap us in a lie called love,
while you slice away autonomy,
carve out dignity,
turn our pain into a headline,
our lives into statistics.
you do not know what it’s like to flinch,
to walk home at night with keys clenched tight
like weapons, like armor,
you do not know what it’s like to wonder
if you’ll be believed,
if justice even has a name,
if freedom even has a face.

But it’s over now
It should have never even began
It was so long ago
Yet it feels like it was yesterday
Others have had it worse
And others have had it better
They didn’t mean it like that
What other way could they have meant it?
This will destroy my family
It has already destroyed you
They already walk on eggshells around me
The eggs that they broke in the first place
I was too much,
You were sick
I was weak
You were a child.
But they’re my parents, how could I not forgive them?
But you’re their kid, how could they do something unforgivable?
No one stopped it
No one knew
Who could I have gone to?
Those you have loved
They never even knew me
Because you never even let them
But it’s over now

there is a ****** tension
between my ego and my self-loathing

they both love to **** each other,
it's almost alarming

looking in the mirror I'm so alluring,
I could blow a kiss

while plotting to sedate myself,
to fabricate a bliss

I legalize hate for myself
to encourage my fouling

I pollute the good in me,
so why would it surround me?

I dont feel safe anywhere ,
Your touch haunts me everywhere.
When I see you i feel an urge to throw up,
When i think of you i fall apart.
Sinking into this infinite loop,
The more I sink the more i feel like a fool.
You forgot about me .
But your touch haunts me .
I am scared that it will happen again.
It doesn't feel valid,
I wasn't *****.
It seems like they don't care.
Because we were kids,
Because i wasnt *****.
I would rather be lost with a bear,
Than be lost with a man.

Laying in the bed I feel suffocated, my throat closing up
I focus on the cracks in the ceiling, careful not to pry my gaze away
I started counting down the minutes until you would be done
So scared my body would betray my indignation

I felt hands crawl inside me, scraping at my insides
Making there way up my body, hands wrapped around my throat
Crawling at my mouth, begging for me to open wide
Begging for me to look you in the eyes

The sheets drenched in my sweat and my back glued to the bed
I felt you slip inside of me, your arms slick with moist
A droplet of sweat falling from your forehead onto my face
Covering the shed tears that lay upon my cheeks
Bile rose in my throat, the nausea threatening to escape

I wanted to be sick, I wanted to scream
My mouth went numb, no words would come out
My pleas for you to stop only fell on deaf ears

- the cracks in the ceiling help me to sleep at night
  when the memory of you comes fading back

'Your body is a temple'
Or so it was.
My skin now soiled,

Just because.

A shot in the dark,
A moment of lust.
Leaving me soaked
To the bone,

Just because.

I was your greatest toy,
To pass and toss.
Tears still stream
From moments i've lost.
No reason to find,

But just because.

I have a special interest in telling about my colonoscopy.
The doc cheerful, secure in his specialty, colon cancer being
the second leading cause of cancer death after lung tumors.
They can snip the precancerous polyps right out of you during the test.
At first the doc gave me the statistics but having paid 25 bucks for this
      interview
I decided to make him explain the science. He was most comfortable
describing the physical architecture of adenomatous v. hyperplastic
      polyps
but what about cell structure I said. He was vague about genes and
      hormones,
I could have been chatting with an Electrolux salesman.
I wasn’t worried although my *** was burning.
Everybody dies, everybody, even Whitman and Emerson, so I browse
      models for dying—
mine are middlebrow, saddlebow—John Wayne in The Shootist, Paul
      Newman in Hombre—or hagiography
Plath her head stuck in an oven, Hemingway who ate his shotgun.
Anyway I was upbeat flirting with the nurse, a muse who has seen it all
      before,
acting tough, which isn’t actually an act
you do your prep and say your prayers.
I thought I’d be in and out **** as you probably already know
the prep for this procedure is worthy of Gandhi. A day of fasting,
clear fluids only, and constant voiding.
You arrive at the hospital one spiritual chicken.
I reflected it can’t hurt, lose a little weight, remember who you are
without so much **** and flesh between you and the natural world.
Snipping polyps is like taking electrons to a lower quantum energy level,
      nearer the nucleus, with fasting and ****** abstinence.
The art of total presence and abstinence, dependence on the Other for
      future existence.