Hidden in the Wall - A Poem of Dissociated Abuse

 Content warning: Dissociation and child abuse.

I wrote these lines in November 2019. I'd been falling repeatedly back into a memory fragment since seeing the psychologist. We talked a little of the tiny amount I remember and she asked how it made me feel. I'm not very good at questions like that. Many of us are not good at questions like that.

It's a memory fragment. I had no conscious memory of it until earlier this year when one of our parts showed a piece to me. Lucy was very cross about that. She was also very cross and sorry too when she showed me something a few months later.

All I have are clues about things that happened. The trouble is, the nature of memory is such that even if it all became clear there would still be no certainty that the things are true. They don't make a lot of sense to me and I tell myself that moments like the one in this fragment are completely impossible.

Bear with the writing. I'm not used to remembering these things, let alone writing about them. This evening I had little choice.

 Hidden in the Wall
 
I smell his aftershave. Cheap,
Seventies fashion, stale musk sickness.
I stretch up, puppet mastered, pull straight,
Lean back into the pain as he
Pulls me tight towards harm by my hair.
Unwashed tobacco breath and he
Speaks words, bitter anger, love starved.
Never tell:  Never tell, he bruise squeezes my arm.

I feel no fear.  Fear is memory displaced.
Alone.  Abused. Used. Without meaning.
Without comprehension.  Without a face.
Alone.  Alone. We become two, form together,
Until I can sink into the wallpaper
Patterns.  Live outside stretched scalp
In lines, curves that never move or spit.
So I forget.  As if broken without cause.

He shaved badly today.  Skin harsher than eyes.
He speaks, growls, reaches down
I depart, one with the wall, solidity shame.
There I remain. Flattened, ignored,
My truth steamed off when 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 hand hurt me, all I thought was,
“Why did they stop the piano playing?”