For five and half years, I was silent. Didn’t know what to say. Couldn’t find the words. Knew that, if I found the words, if I reported what happened, no consequences would occur for the perpetrator responsible. But I lived. I grew. I gained intellect and strength and finally found my beauty again. It doesn’t really end, once it’s over. (…) There are still days when the monster wakes” — but I am here. I am stronger than my past. I am greater than my present. And I am leaping boldly into my future, banishing shame, proclaiming love, and giving a voice to those who have been silenced. Rape is not a joke. This is the story of THE AFTER.
Tag: assault
Monster
It’s cold in my fingertips,
then burning all over,
like electrifying radiation
and I can’t control it and
it’s racing through my veins like
water under bridges and
it’s lit in my chest like spark plugs sparked
and the monster isn’t solid and it’s
moving through my bones and
it’s smiling that smile that makes my body
calm.
And it plucks out my eyes and puts in its own
and I am no longer in control of myself.
No longer my choices.
I’m possessed by the demon he created there
and the alcohol I use to quell it.
the after
stuck in the mud, in the muck of the swamp, with no escape from the slime hidden deep deep down, in the bones of the creatures residing there.
stuck in the tar, in the wet hot cement, while it’s drying and im crying but no sound comes out.
stuck in sky, in the starless abyss, where the moon is asleep and the sun is away and the breathing of the monsters is the echoing song.
My silent skin.
I look at my thighs
and can no longer tell the difference
between the scar and the stretchmark,
one thing a mark of growth, the other of bloody sacrifice.
/
Regardless of their past, these etchings no longer
ooze the redness they once birthed. They sit, engraved upon
my silent skin, holding on to memories and nightmares,
both distant tales around which my soul is entwined.
redlight, greenlight
facebook, man, it’s a danger zone.
i waste the time i have just scrolling and stopping,
checking up on friends i haven’t talked to in a while,
and sifting through pictures of my college years,
all the fights and the tears and the fear that
success wouldn’t be
what i wanted it to be,
and i check out the posts made by all of my friends –
stop.
That is not a name i recognize
but it’s a face that i recognize
the name has changed but the face is the same,
he is hiding in plain sight.
so really nothing has changed.
stop.
we have thirty four mutual friends,
plus one —
the first person i told about him
and about that night.
the first person who lied
as she “sympathized” with me.
i called her my best friend,
went to war against her enemies
and always had her back in battle –
well, this is the end of that line of fighting.
stop.
he’s holding a tube of Tom’s Simply White
which means we now use the same toothpaste.
and my stomach gets tight,
because what he puts in his mouth
is the same thing i clean mine with
each night before i fall asleep
into dreams of his teeth and my blood
again.
stop.
we have posted not one but
five of the same articles and news stories
about the Baltimore “riots,”
posting #blacklivesmatter
and standing on the same side of a cause.
stop.
but he is holding a gun.
he is holding a gun,
and it is not a toy and i stop breathing
and my shoulders are touching my ears because
he is holding a gun
and it is terrifying enough to know that he did what he did to me
without one.
stop.
it was a word he understood but did not listen to
stop
not the first time or the seventh
stop
so i counted ceiling tiles and played music in my head
stop
i can’t listen to that album anymore
and now, when i look in the mirror that hangs above my door,
he is there, and i hate myself
until i cry and let it out,
let the sludge that he left there under my skin
bleed out in the open
until i am empty of him
and everything he ever was before
and everything he still is right now.
out of those thirty five mutual friends,
ten of them, yes ten, know what he did
and took his side.
so maybe, today, it is the perfect time
for a cleanse.
to sweep out the dirt that lies in the shadows,
and start planting life in the light.
green light,
go
i like my eyes
go
im smart as hell
go
i love my thighs
go
it’s not my fault
go
i love myself
go,
go,
go.
nameless, blameless, now on paper.
I finally wrote down on paper what happened to me. And I don’t know how to feel…I had some flashbacks, some nightmares and unsettled mornings when I woke up. Some off days at work because I kept seeing his face in the air, like a ghost, only darker. And then I felt stuck. Stuck in the mud of a choice I didn’t get to make. And then I felt empowered, because I was finally able to put the events in some kind of chronological order, without allowing the memory to stop me. And it’s a wave, back and forth, a swing set of emotions I am attempting to control and navigate and let loose. And I’m trying to find some sanity within the release. Maybe it will come soon, but it’s hard now. Maybe it will never come. But, no matter what comes next, I have at least been heard by the screen that always seemed to remain daunting and blank and white as fear in front of me. Paper no longer erases my past, no longer stifles my truth. It no longer just hears, it listens and absorbs it like a sponge, accepts it like a boomerang and sends it back to me, full of power and rage and honesty and eventually peace.
And I just needed to release that.
Emilie Morgan
“Please don’t call me a survivor. I really don’t feel like one. I still live my life as if I were raped yesterday. Essentially I was; it happens again every night in my dreams. I am not a victim either. I am a woman – and a statistic.”
…
“It was four months later that I found myself at a Take Back the Night march. I was eighteen years old and in my first semester of college. That night I found myself surrounded by women, most of whom I hardly knew. Yet we all knew each other’s story as if it were our own. It was. We were all there for the same reason. Our lives had been affected by sexual violence, and we were ready to heal. // With candles in our hands and tears in our eyes, we listened to story after story of women just like me. We held hands and closed our eyes and asked for healing to begin… // I was not alone. I was surrounded by strong women who were all surviving [and] the energy in that room could not be contained.”
little morsel
im stuck.
stuck in this mud and im tired of fighting it
and I just wanna lie in it.
let it swallow me up,
just for a moment
so I can feel broken,
but I can’t.
because the darkness arrives,
and it breathes and it thrives
inside of my skin,
in the holes in my bones
and it flecks out from my fingernails.
and i become silent, curled and unmoving
and i cant seem to get myself out of bed.
i am angry
that you smile still
that you sucked your teeth while i talked
that you use the same toothpaste as me
right now, today
four years later.
i’m mad that you’re alive.
is that too harsh?
no. it’s not. so i won’t apologize
like i apologize for everything.
fuck you.
air on fire
I was air before I met you.
Floating high and free and away
But you caught me,
snatched me right out of the air
With your bulging eyes and your
Meaty mouth
And your blood stained
Heart that ticks only for
Power.
You stuffed me in
Balloons never to be popped,
No helium to let me rise.
You packed me in bubble wrap
never to be broken open by a child.
And you buried me in an old dusty accordion and never
Ever let me play.
You took away everything I was.
But you did not know that the breath of my story
Would soon be released
By another’s loving fingers
Upon the keyboard.
That a voice sighing behind the microphone stand
Would awaken a fire within my chest
So bold
it encompassed the black hole
that you punched there
With your fist.
The way you trapped me
Did not define my existence –
The word victim will not
Cage me now.
[No.]
I am a survivor.
I will rise.
I am floating.
I am free.
the musings of a miss 