We remained invisible to you.
Of no importance. A bottomless
Pit of childlike love, subservient to you,
Mercy on you, pitying you (you thrived),
Putting you first, taking in all the pain
That you amassed day after day after day,
Overfeeding us with poison, locating love
Without us, something abstract that needs
To be sought, constantly, a wish to take to our
Graves with us. It would never happen.
Many times I have dreamed of your death,
I won’t lie as my mind doesn’t lie when it dreams,
I can’t control it, I observe, the undercurrent of death,
A body hanging by a thread, we disentangled ourselves,
The marks on our throats, your rotten hands, the director,
Squeezing my flesh, facial, squeezing, taking my life,
My autonomy, begging for love, you got me fucked, and fucked,
And still you’d accuse me, you’d curse me, send me to dark places
And then blaming me for falling on my face, there it is,
Yours again, never your responsibility, the condemned female body.
I wonder how many people really knew you.
You set the stage so well, the lighting, you,
In the sick limelight. You selected people,
You portrayed yourself, you had all your
Personae ready to go, what a feast, we became
The fucking devil in their eyes, the heartless
Absent devils, abandoning you, leaving you to die
And rot and disintegrate, without mercy, without love.
And they’d never ask for enlightenment.
Stuck in their ridiculous ignorance that you
Created and abused. You did this. You made
Sure you were remembered the right way by
The masses of blind sycophants, your life’s work,
Your legacy, you rendered the truth incompatible
With the ideal image. They cling to it, suck it, on their knees.
Very well. You’ve established those walls. Fair enough.
All yours. Let them stay in their dream lands.
They would never question anything.
Why we couldn’t speak your language.
Why we created a safe distance from you.
Why we struggled in our lives, in our relationships.
Why we let people treat us like trash and misconstrued it as love.
Why we let you infect us with your violence.
Why we cried in silence and as loudly as we possibly could
As if it could free us from you and your terrors.
Why we accepted the wrong people around us.
Why we sold ourselves short.
Why we always thought the worst of ourselves.
Why we were convinced that we were worthless, useless, to be abused,
Tyrannised, bullied, laughed at, threatened, guilt-tripped, neglected.
I was there. I endured. I endured you.
Every fucking piece of you. All that insanity.
I put it on my shoulders. I was a child.
I’d always remain a child. I’d provide boys
And men with sex, isn’t that right, father?
Then I became a piece of flesh, sinful, an abomination,
You didn’t teach me well, you didn’t show me,
You didn’t live it, don’t you understand, those fragmented
Disconnected parts of us, looking for you, looking for love,
Were direct reflections of you and your actions and your
Presence and your absence, cries for help, helplessness,
We, you, always, suffering, falling on our faces, no idea
Who we were, studying you, failing you, copying you,
Emptying our hearts out. And it was never enough, times five.
“Kniendes Mädchen, auf beide Ellenbogen gestützt” by Egon Schiele (1890-1918)
Croque-Melpomene 