You raised me to be a victim of yours.
I can’t believe that I let you grab my chin
And scream at my face, my ears bursting with your
Spit and voice.
Let you look at me as if I was supposed
To be a saint, pure and untouched, not a product of yours,
Tainted and abused, looking for appreciation everywhere in
The wrong hands and laps.
I imitated the women you
Drooled after and exploited. I thought they were so happy.
To have your attention. I never knew that you’d throw them
Away like trash, like your own filth, cleansing yourself of them,
Everything they gave you to make you feel like a man.
I heard the way you talked about the female body,
Nameless, heartless, from one to the other.
Recreating their narratives, you’d never be the whore.
That’s the backwards universe you brought me into.
Never explained anything to me.
Just called me names that belonged to you.
Leaving all these traps everywhere and you’d gloat
Once I’d fall in. I tried to understand you.
You wanted to be pitied, there had never been an end in sight.
You’d inflict harm and then you’d beg for mercy.
You’d never learn your own lessons.
You are an open book full of lies.
I can’t erase the sounds of fury that you left behind in my mind
And memory, how you stomped your way into my
Muscle memory of fear. I want to shake you off and
Out of my body, the particles of my needs.
I still feel the rhythm of your violence making
An entire house tremble.
Your wrath against yourself, the world and us, took me so far
That I was ready to jump out of your racing raging car
Convinced that I’d be safer on the side of the road
Than next to you in the driver’s seat.
Croque-Melpomene 