something happened

May 20, 2012 22:21

LJ idol week 28: walking on eggshells


museums of dying moths
or the stench of something rotten
rush forward,
overwhelming

something        happened

it's scrawled in journals
with red marker slashes,
slopped across pages
and the story it paints
spreads like mold,
cancelling the sweet self
who once existed

I remember
in flashes,
in swathes of pandemic
   spreading blame like sickness
mom was telling me
something,
speaking in the rhythm of ambulance lights
saying that he
that what he did
was not my fault

that thing,
pus-filled screeches,
stole my body,
took things
that no woman should have to wonder
how they were lost

something        happened
and I will not tell you
the whole secret
because that would be too much truth;
I walk on eggshells
so I won't ever have to face the silences within me.

Sleeping Beauty was raped too,
but mothers don't tell their children
that story.
(As if by omitting that unpleasant detail,
they will protect their children from possibility.)

In college, I avoided lectures on date rape,
afraid that they would brand me red
in shades of bruises,
as though people might be able to tell
what had happened to me.

At first, when I opened my mouth
to break the silences that had stretched
too long,
my hands fluttered like trapped birds.
Every time I talked about it,
I expected the ground I walked on to split with grief,
the chair to cave in, the eyes to turn away.
But no one has broken
under the weight of my secrets -
they are still with listening.

Later,
I burned any journal pages with red slashes,
hoping to release the insistent wraiths.
But those letters are still
etched on my insides.

They talk about survivor's guilt,
and I imagine his lack of it.
I imagine how
those twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds
were only an extended coffee break to him -
they don't paint nightmares on his eyelids,
two a.m. screams on his lips.
They don't matter to him after thirteen years,
probably didn't matter after a single year.
On the other hand, those twenty-three minutes and sixteen seconds
defined me for a decade
until I learned not to care
about how many eggshells I had to crush
to break that deadly silence.

One in six women are sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. This poem is dedicated to them in hopes that their unending asskicking survivor strength may continue. Project Unbreakable is an amazing series of photographs that provides a space for survivors to tell their stories. That remarkable project was the inspiration for this poem.

I am ever grateful to milk_and_glassvorsaga for being my beta readers.

pacing while prayingyou are beautifuldigging for buried crapwe should all be narcissistsˌɪnkənˈsiːvəbl̩juicy memoriesrelax. breathe. bupkis.a gypsy hearta month of rainup is the new downyour words, her silencesground rules for a hairless housematethe smell of particleboard in the morningfrom an aspiring spinsterscarves & sweaters & shawlson emotional idiocyfairytale-makerbetrayal by choicehow to age gracefullySan Francisco's smilenot a needle but a drinkEinstein I am notsearching for ballonof the earthbecoming Cirseahanky panky in the redwoods ♥ 

secrets, poem, lj idol

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