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Beth Decisions Jun 2015
Remember
The day we first met and you fell asleep holding me.
Remember
The day you tried to ask me on a date and I got scared and invited my bestfriend.
Remember
The night we fell asleep in the back of your stepdads truck.
Remember
When we spent an entire night sending each other Avatar the Last Airbender pickup lines.
Remember*
Our first kiss and how perfect it was.
Remember
All those nights we slept on FaceTime.
Remember
All those nights we spent watching Netflix, curled up in each others arms.
Remember
All the times we use to wrestle and you'd pin me against you.
Remember
All those drives we'd take holding hands, music blaring.
Remember
All the inside jokes we had. All the different names we would have for things.
Remember
How we always got butterflies.
Remember
How we looked at each other like there was no one else in the world.
Remember
The way our skin felt pressed against each other.
Remember
The night you painted my nails.
Remember
The day I rode my bike across town just because you wanted me there.

I remember all of it. I remember every memory. Every feeling. I close my eyes and remember it like it is still happening. So tell me...

*Do you still remember when?
Leila Whitney Jun 2017
I-
Did not want to be known as the girl from the troubled childhood.
The girl who distrusts all men for simply being men.
The girl who convinced herself that friends-
Are pulled pins on the nuclear grenade that is my new life.

Yet my whole life has been built around this,
I moved cause i was hurt,
I hurt because I was moved,
I am an artist because my body no longer has the capabilities to perform in - literally- any sport that contains,
running, speaking, competing, or drawing attention to myself.

I can't change the way I feel about this-

Yet I have accepted that this is not a cage, this-
is the universe that I live in.
The stuttering is my hand held pistol keeping those around me away from my horrors.
My head down, shoulders taunt and fists clenched is my titanium shield,
Do not come close to me
Please, do not touch me or to dust I will turn.

I don't appreciate half cocked pity
Do not pull me close to whisper words of sorrow,
My heartbeat will bang war drums louder than anything you have to say.

Yet do not tell me to get over it, that it's no big deal-

Like the past is just the past
Like these burns don't still contain the very same ash.

Touch me in condolence and you´ll feel the magma under my skin boiling.
Small girl no more,
Far more than hand holding

Gentle smiles form themselves into the overpowering monster that is my mortification.
Don't tell me to sit pretty.
stand tall, smile bigger, walk taller, speak louder,
don't let your past define you!
Did you know healing isn't natural, its a break through!

Don't tell me to live my life like nothing has happened when I can not even look at a face in half cast shadow without running to the door ready for flight,
I-
was never taught fight.

I am trying.
I continuously trying to relearn,
Like planting new flowers in a burnt field.
Digging through memories that feel more like acid, melting my willpower,
Singeing my confidence
And drowning all that I am in pain.

I try to move on but-

This anxiety bubbles in my throats like bulls ready to stampede any chance I have of “moving on”

Let me tell you, I do not feel stronger.
When I doubt my new stepdads intentions, I do not feel stronger.
When I think of the first one, I do not feel any older.
I am still six, and I'm still hiding in a back room, and I´m still frightened-
And I am still so hopeful, that I'm wrong about him
This is very messy ´but I cant seem to find the patience to organize it.
Connie Hopkins Aug 2021
Growing up having to hide
your tears and fears
from the one person who should
help you, not hurt you more
you do things, that you hope
will make her proud of you
or at least happy with you
but nothing works

Mom asked if it would be alright
if the man that molested me
spent Christmas Eve Night

I was asked would it be ok
if I did not get anything
for Christmas but a used
a camera that belonged to her
because there was no money

Then Christmas morning arrives
there are presents everywhere
but none for me

I had 1 dad and 3 stepdads
only one was a keeper
I thank the Lord for him
this man I knew as Joe.

                          By Connie Hopkins
devi Sep 2021
Adrianna Exposé

So I went on a safari leave in January because I got too bored to do anything anymore and they failed to see that this “I wasn’t doing anything” was happening for the last year and a half. If you keep saying that you’re busy really, they play right into your hand. I was never the type of person who cared for titles or anything, so the second I signed my name to that zoo, I went in full depression mode. This was not at all what I wanted, but the money was good and everybody around me kept telling me that it’s a good thing happening. It wasn’t, at all. I usually never stay at a job longer than 1 or 2 years, simply because most animals who invest their energy in being someone else’s donkey (no matter the ranking, if you’re gone they wouldn’t drop a tear and you’re replaced, remember that) have no actual real life for themselves and that’s also why they want to know about yours so they could use it against you and feel better about theirs. That’s what people apparently do with your information, they use it against you. So I don’t tell any personal stories unless I think it will be helpful if I shared it, same goes for my goals, I like to keep quiet but any longer than 2 years and the animals around you start to take offense in your attitude. The things I did tell, were mostly lies but like I said: it was all used against me in a really rude fashion. The monkey in charge, Adrianna Whitmang got jealous a lot, he didn’t like the way I was giving out some of my attention to other collegues within the zoo, especially when I literally gave none to him. So when I told a small bit about my mother’s death, he started using words to say that I have problems because of it, the same goes about bits and pieces about my life my friends or family. He felt comfortable victimizing me, instead of accepting that he isn’t attractive in my eyes. I always tell people the first thing he ever “professionally” said to me was “Hi I’m Adrianna Whitmang and I’m in an open marriage, can I have your phone number?”. This is an actual true story. So he tried to run a game within our department, but I just never cared for it. After I had hit my all-time expiration date of 1/2 years, I just wanted him to pay me for my presence, so he did. He gave me a full on raise on two occasions even though I hadn’t done anything to deserve it, other than saying it the whole time. So my behavior got even worse, at some point I was really unhappy about doing nothing, it was really honest to God nothing. But I felt even more unhappy doing something about it, I didn’t want to anymore. I simply never cared, my heart was never in it. What I did with my heart is where my body went, fûcking the collegae I had an interest in during all office hours.

The real truth is, I really don’t really like certain people. After I was sēxuālly abused as little kid, I developed a disliking in these people, especially men, in my case it’s a bit racist but I can’t help it. I have a big contempt for white people when it comes to attractiveness and séxuāl preference, other than that I’m completely fine. I come from a mixed home, I’m half white myself so a real racist I can’t be. Apart from that I had a very white but Eastern culturally loaded upbringing, but I never liked the mentality of the people here in Holland. I never voluntarily been with a white person nor do I think I could physically bear it.

So again, apart from the mental issues he tried talking me into, he thought we grew up in completely different worlds and he had to teach me about his because how on earth could I know any of that, right. He threw another one of his limitations on me and I did not feel a need to tell him otherwise. I got nothing to proof to nobody, plus he already gave me what I wanted. I am always the underdog, the free spirit no can control. But he failed to ask me about my childhood, because I could’ve told him I grew up without any secrets, taboos or any stuck conventions about reality. My childhood home was a party house, home parties were a thing in my home, my mother’s friends were mostly high ranked white people within our society and before they went out or with birthday’s, our house became the place to be. I grew up with having multiple gay stepdads, men coming to our house and leave as the most expensive good-looking women ever, political figures, even high priced prostitutes that looked like a Goddesses but mostly the truly free minded people. Apart from that I was raised using proper etiquette everyday, I was always pushed to get degrees, taught to be independent, taught to fight my own battles, learned about the real world in a beautiful fashion and I was raised with so much love. My mother told me every single day of my life that she loved me or thought the world about me, and if she didn’t, one of my gay stepdaddies would, I grew up being invincible. But hey, he told me that I was crazy so I probably am right?

After I announced my safari leave, he quite obviously and actively made the process “difficult” for me because I probably got under his skin. But no difficulties in my position over here, got all the time in the world.. but hmmkay, he likes to believe he has some kind of effect on me, so I gave him my super serious, serial special "raging *****" effects. It were petty things really, but it did the job. He actually thinks I care, he still doesn’t believe I don’t. It’s sad he is so limited by his beliefs or hates the fact that other people can so easily break free from the burdens he is experiencing. I am a free women or better yet a free person. The real reason he's doing this is because he is unable to get me in bed and that's the honest truth.

I do not get jealous, mad or bothered about the things he comes up with, because it’s not about him, nor the zoo or the animals grazing in it. I solely stayed for that one guy, the man I followed around like a puppy, jup I said it. That’s why I stayed for so long, and had to make everybody believe that I actually cared about the zoo, or the animals in it, but truth be told I simply never did. At the end of the day I’m not desperately in it for the money, I’m just surviving society. In the conversations we had, he should’ve figured it out because I was quite honest in the beginning about my plans.. plans that did not include the zoo EVER.
thelonious Dec 2021
Bring a thousand miles of rusted gates.
Slurry upland and rest
by the prickly
Holly nest
grazing on the leeward
of changing hills,
dwindling roots.

It’s shadow, a memory,
as shadows are
hiding the face
, avoiding stepdads
And consequences
Of the nuclear family.
In lucid daydreams

are the muddy puddles
filling in the potholes
Every winter, we
embrace like the
Goodnight kiss, saying
Does it mean anything if
cows are happy?

When the storm clouds
settle in bulbous purple
Expanse across
waves of field,
And this town’s complacent decay
Is just one year
further along?

When always there are flies.
thelonious Dec 2021
Bring a thousand miles of rusted gates.
Slurry upland and rest
by the prickly
Holly nest
grazing on the leeward
of changing hills,
dwindling roots.

It’s shadow, a memory,
as shadows are
hiding the face
, avoiding stepdads
And consequences
Of the nuclear family.
In lucid daydreams

are the muddy puddles
filling in the potholes
Every winter, we
embrace like the
Goodnight kiss, saying
Does it mean anything if
cows are happy?

When the storm clouds
settle in bulbous purple
Expanse across
waves of field,
And this town’s complacent decay
Is just one year
further along?

When always there are flies.

— The End —