1997

TRIGGER WARNING- This is about my experiences with sexual assault. Please do not read if you are sensitive to this subject. 

This is a poem that I wouldn't usually post, as I don't think it's very good. But as part of the process, I've promised myself that I would post all complete poems that I write. I need to fight the writer's block by putting out my messy, incomplete, and just plain bad work.

Nineteen Ninety-Seven

My eyes were blue until I was five

Pale skin, long straight hair, and a cherry lollipop grin.

Since then I've been skinned knees and sunburns, 

unruly short hair and these chameleon eyes.

The good in me was stolen back then

in the way my imagination never fully recovered

and from time to time my mouth is still coated in salt.

When I was twelve I learned that I could protect myself from anything,

but that I can only run and hide for so long.

It was only seven years before it came back to me.

Before I began crying in my sleep,

counting the bathroom tiles and the radio channels,

and practicing how to make boys weak in the knees.

I turned into that tornado girl;

leaving disaster in my wake.

I altered my words and swung my fists 

until I was unreachable; unloveable.

Then I went to the men and I pulled them in

and I brought them right down with me.

Determined to be a fighter- a survivor.

Ground my edges until they were rough,

carved canyons and mountains,

daring them to try.

I thought I could outrun the ghost,

of his voice in my ear, 

of his hands in my hair,

of the screams- the screams I am not sure I ever screamed.

But still I thrash and cry in my sleep.

My stomach turns during Halloween parties.

I sometimes cry in the stalls at the bar.

Sometimes I like to think I wiped that part of me away.

Those years don't exist. That pain is not real.

But sometimes I am in a loop 

and every day is 1997.