Untitled II

It’s two am and I am trying not to write about you again
But you always find a way to slither in, don’t you?
Pluck my thoughts from my brain like picking pomegranate seeds
And using yourself to fill all the empty spaces
Creeping into every crevice like you belong here
Carving your way through my head and through the rest of me like a sculptor

I take the knife from your hands, cut open the pomegranate
Say “listen, I was here, too”
I may have built you a home in my body once upon a time but
This was my body first
This hell turned sanctuary turned holy ground
Was never supposed to be for the taking

You have spent too many years drinking me up
Breaking me down
Folding me and
Molding me
Into something that can be yours
I have spent too much time being pushed into

mattresses

the ground

another mans sweating body

They tell me that this is strength
This is strength
Wear your exhumation on your sleeve
Show them that they cannot hurt you anymore
They cannot hurt you anymore
Theycannothurtyouanymore

But the darkness never stops wearing his face
I [we- the victims
No, the survivors
No, the people who were left behind]
Walk to the car [or anywhere,
Because the fear never washes off the skin,
Like the scar of one’s childhood trauma]
Alone at night [or day],
And the fear squeezes me with his [your] long crooked fingers
And it will choke [slice/stab/disembowel] me the same way

You [they- the ones who seared themselves into our flesh]
Take up all my time
Too many nights spent screaming
Too many hours wasted while I watched myself unravel
I want my life back,
The one where you never taught me to tremble,
But I don’t know how to ask for it [beg for it/take it back/reclaim it]
So I write about it instead
[how do you fear a thing and love it at the same time?]

This was never a poem about you
This is about all the things you took from me
This is about the screaming
And the crying so hard I threw up if only to try and empty myself of what you instilled in me
This is about the pomegranate seeds,
About how I hope they taste sour in your mouth
How I hope you can never say my name again without choking on it

I hope you choke on it