Photo by Mariano E. RodrÃguez on Unsplash
Content Warning: Mentions of physical and sexual abuse.
HOW DARE YOU
You owe me 36 cakes and 36 birthday presents and 36 years of singing and celebrations and being inside with you where the light is.
Where the warmth is.
Who kept you quiet when he was outside looking for you?
Who taught you how to convince them to feed you? To stop hitting you? To not rape you (yet, this time, again)?
Who was there under the covers and who forced the air into your tired lungs, who forced the heart in your unwilling chest to beat and beat and who fought for you and who fled with you and who kept you safe?
And now you add me to a list of BETRAYERS?!
Because I taught you how to make it through. Because I taught you how to be tough and small and lethal and silent?
How dare you?
HOW DARE YOU?!
H o w d a r e y o u ?
SPRING
It’s the first day of Spring
And everyone who died is still dead.
And all of us who lived are still winter inside.
A year of winter, a year of pushing upwards through endless snow.
Upwards that feels like sideways that feels like down.
Still pushing.
SUGAR MOON
Sugar moon in Portland and I feel all out of ends and upside down. Miracles are conditional, don’t you think?
Crow moon. Worm moon.
It’s the end of winter and I can almost scream at myself coming out of myself.
Writhing upwards.
why me why now why not