Realize

TW Sexual Violence

I don’t really feel like this body is mine.
My heart feels sick.
Poison pumping through my veins.
New pain is enriched.

It happened over again.
Your hands are still touching me.
Lumbar in pain.
You’re holding me down.
I struggle in vain.
Let go of my neck!

Let me breathe.
Let me sing.
I burn up from within.
You accuse me of fabricating pain on a whim.

What happened in the dark?
What ripped me apart?
Stuck in cyclical hell.
I’m deep in this well.
What did you do to my heart?
How could you?
I’m scared this will never stop.
You carry on as I rot.
Effortlessly nonchalant.

It’s been years.

But this is the first night I believe it actually happened.
For years I’ve felt like a liar.
Thinking every time I told my story
I conspired.
But last night something was rewired.
What hurts most isn’t the fact that you held me down.
It’s that my own body betrayed me.
My own pleasure scarred me deeper than anything you could inflict.
Every time I get close to ecstasy stitches rip.

They call it consent.
But guilt and fear
took the place of joy.
You were comfortable reducing me to your pliable toy.
How is that not evil?
How was none of it illegal?

How could I face anyone else
ever again?
How do I connect with the right to complain?
I feel like I did it to myself .
The tragedy of my health.
Something I felt like I deserved.
My punishment for this endless hurt.

You took my words.
My voice expired.
These lungs grew tired.
I bow my head in shame.
I don’t want to be rewired.
I failed to protect myself as a child.
My useless guilt consumes.
A mans perspective subsumes.

I’m the one who called you over that night.
I invited you to sit on my bed.
Sent some kind of signal that you could take.
Wore something that enabled an innocent boy’s mistake,
Didn’t scream when you started being mean,
Unsure if anything bad was even happening,
I went numb.
Scrambled guts I didn’t trust,
Even now though I know this is what I went through,
I hesitate to believe it is actually true.

I don’t want to believe it’s true.
It’s so much pain to sort through,
Haven’t I done enough?
Shackled by the chance to erupt.

I’ve read about victims of sexual violence.
What I’m feeling matches up with so much.
But I don’t remember any article,
That teaches a victim to trust,
Herself,
Himself,
Themselves,
Who is even left to trust?
What if the person I feel like is dust?
Am I real?
What do I feel?
How do I heal?
I could always kneel,
To someone else’s mind.
Explain one more time how none of this is real,
And I’ll force myself to survive.
Let go of this silly delusion,
That I could ever aspire to thrive.