She heard their voices repeat what they had infused her with,
Your body doesn’t have boundaries,
Without outlines and restrictions, out there, from here to there,
From inside of you out of you, you do what you do what you want
What we want you to do with us.
A girl, a ghost, the tender young skin,
Blemished by their lack of words,
Their burdened intent,
The weight of expectant silence, the leaking mouths, greedy,
Self-indulgent,
The outreaching hands, the breasts that slowly
Grow, the dormant sex, your body doesn’t have boundaries,
It is mine, it is ours, to take, to eat, to swallow whole, to spit out
And reclaim.
The whisper, the threat, the pretended kindness,
Gentleness that burns and kills, hands on her flesh and skin,
Smelling her ears and strains of hair,
Parts of her,
Disembodied, emptied, carnage and tastelessly
Digested, sensationalised,
Scandal, silenced,
Subdued, imbued, muteness and sexualisation.
All of their fingers on her, force, grabbing her,
Pressurised, urgent, now, now, now,
The magic trick, her body performs,
Grows into it, smaller and smaller,
The bunny in the hat, the woman cut in half,
A girl without a childhood, hands touching her
Under a hot steaming blanket,
The marshland of desire, invisible fantasies,
Challenging her, the child’s mind hungry for love,
We shove it in your mouth, your body doesn’t have boundaries.
Incessantly. She doesn’t want to, but she complies.
Doesn’t know why. Her body opens up and dies.
Bit by bit. With every taste of salt. Bitterness.
Excessive force on the back of her head.
The shoulders melting under their hands,
Sinking, wrecked, a ruin unseen, detached, preserved.
Popped open, evoked and buried, oxygen out.
Her body fades into theirs. There is no silhouette.
No no, no, no, no no.
And years later, her body is stuck in the same narrative.
Not hers, never has been and yet, her body, her body
Doesn’t have boundaries.
And he shoves, ignoring her face, the mouth that has not learned
How to refuse, how to say no, how to draw the line.
That there is no necessity to explain or justify or apologise or please.
And she realised that she had been robbed of her language,
The language of her self
And that now, right then and there,
The abuse of the self resonates with his abuse of her
And her body
Whose boundaries had been stolen
And blurred into imprisoned oblivion.
Croque-Melpomene 