Impulse

downwiththefuckingship:

trigger warning

my mother has a photograph
she likes to show me when she’s upset
she says
you used to be such a nice boy
i just
don’t know what happened to you
now i admit
i barely recognize the child
three years old on halloween
smiling without someone
having to remind me to do it
but the picture has a habit
of giving me flashbacks

snap

suddenly i am 7 again
and a pair of broken glasses
at the bus stop in your culdesac
it’s one of my oldest lessons
cause mama knows best
she’s teaching me
to turn the other cheek
kill em with kindness son

snap

i’m thirteen and we
are in your bedroom
you are telling me that i should
think about it this
as though we were scientists
It’s cool
it’s cool we’re just experimenting
everyone your age experiments
how will you ever know if you don’t?

snap

i’m twenty eight
and someone on the internet
is telling me that the word rape
could never belong to me
she says
“Don’t you know how triggering it is for women?”
and the only thing i can think about
is if my story deserves to breathe
if it doesn’t sound like hers
if my trauma has to wear a dress
before you believe it

snap

every single day i am seventeen
and on your doorstep again
sorry that it took me so long
to grow into these fists
that the hate grew like a pearl inside me
around a single impurity
until i could no longer bear it
the largest kitchen knife our house
in my hands
the look on my face
as i realize the home you lived
in is now
empty
how i buried it in the front yard
with my bare hands
and sometimes
i think about visiting the spot
with a wreath
or white cross
the way people do along highways
where people have died
she still asks me
what happened to her sweet boy
but never where the kitchen knife went
now i choke
when i hear things like
“you look like you turned out
just fine to me”
every time someone tells me
to man up
i watch my childhood
drive away in the white van of his bedroom
when the only person
i was brave enough to tell said
“why didn’t you just try to avoid it?”
i said nothing
it felt like someone died
and i helped hide the body
i wish i had said
maybe oklahoma city
should have tried
to avoid timothy mcveigh
wish i would have said
the twin towers should’ve tried
to avoid new york in september
cause i’m tired of feeling like
im the skeleton in someone else’s closet
tired of feeling like there’s a ghost in my house when i’m home
wondering if any of the bridges i’ve stood on
will out last the memory
of what you did to me
wondering if there is a word
for drowning
without dying at the end

(via downwiththefuckingship)