Memory. A Fragment - a poem. c/w child sexual abuse

c/w child sexual abuse

Don't scroll past the hand if that is likely to affect you.

The hand is there for happier reasons.  I'm feeling and falling in wibbly-wobbly traumery-waumery experiences today but that's only today.  Eighteen months ago this weekend I took my last dose of a psychiatric drug after a careful taper from the ones I was taking.  My hand is filled with no drugs but with emptiness.  Emptiness is potential.

Memory.  A fragment.

I smell his aftershave on the back of the

number sixty-two bus.

Cheap seventies fashion.  A stale musk sickness.

I stretch up, pull my spine straight past posture,

Lean back into pain as he

Pulls me tight towards harm by the hair.

Unwashed tobacco breath as he

Speaks words.  Bitter anger.

"Never tell."  "Never tell," as he squeezes my arm.

I feel no fear.  Fear is memory, unplaced.

Alone.  Abused.  Used.  Without meaning.

Without life.  Without a face.

Alone, alone.  We become two, fall together

Until I can sink into the wallpaper

Patterns.  Live outside stretched scalp

In lines, curves that never move or bruise.

So I forget.  As if broken without cause.

He shaved badly today, skin harsher than eyes.

He speaks, growls, reaches down and

I depart.  One with the wall in shamed solidarity.

There I remain, flattened, ignored,

My truth steamed off before the wall came down.

He feels, rubs, groans, demands.

I become nothing, hated for what he did.

Despised for what he said I made him do.

I am safe.  Hidden in the wall.

As his hands hurt me, all I thought was

“Why did they stop the piano playing?”