open wide | a poem

I emphasised what

they reduced me to

*

in your eyes

my body wasn’t whole

*

in your eyes

a broken body

can be trespassed against

*

again

and again

*

maybe you haven’t been the origin

but that doesn’t eradicate your traces

*

truth is a thing that I found in the dirt

within your body

truth is a thing that cut me

truth is a body that opens up

a body that opens its holes

teeth out

holes

openings

gaping

tongue in my face

*

my father believed his own lies

and I raised myself against them

*

taking me down his road

and introducing his demons to me

*

they are yours now, he said

*

I grew old in the house of insanity and recoil

*

your homecomings have always been a threat

*

I made my body do things

that I didn’t want to do

*

and you told me it wouldn’t leave a scar