Category Archives: abuse

Lost in Translation

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I have not posted in quite some time. Been having a lot of feelings lately and am reminded of this poem I wrote back in May.

TW: Sexual Abuse

Lost in Translation
05.30.2016

Sun drops drip down my shoulder and I am cooled to the point of disaster.

I don’t know what I’m writing,
let alone how I feel.

Do you know who I am when I’m not here?
Could I possibly be any more alone when even I’ve left myself?

My body breathes, and how?
How
when I’m not even there to inhale?

Is numb a feeling or is it the absence
of truth?

Truth.

Truth is, what I never knew
I’ve known before
and now
I don’t know how to feel anything but pain,
and
a dull queasiness seeping through my bones,
and
numb.

And
I wish I could remember
who taught me to feel this way
and
the first time I learned to leave my body
and let it feel whatever happened
while I didn’t have to feel a thing.

And the truth is
my body knows
and tries to tell me
and sometimes, maybe
I don’t want to listen
or
we don’t speak the same language
because it tells me things I never wanted to understand.
And maybe I never will.

Pedophile
is a Greek word
meaning,
“lover of children”;
and to me
and my body,
that will never
ever
ever
make sense.

So leave me to feel numb
because it makes more sense to me than the truth.

And if I ever understood
what makes some minds work the way they do
I’m not sure I could ever feel a thing again
and it would make about as much sense
as the sun making me feel cold
or a pedophile
being someone who was supposed to love me.

EJZ

The Ghost of Denial

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I took a poetry course last fall and one of our first prompts was to write a poem with a title structured: “The [Concrete Noun] of [Abstract Noun]”. I came up with “The Ghost of Denial”.

The Ghost of Denial

Everything’s fine.

No, well
yes,
but really – Everything’s fine.

Yeah, I cry
sometimes
at night
most nights
every night
when no one can hear me
but
it’s how I always got to sleep
so I’m used to it by now.
It’s like
my lullaby.
It’s okay.

And yeah, he’s drinking but
it’s just one
bottle
and he’s young, you know
he can handle it.
He’s got a good tolerance.
He’s okay.

And yeah, we fight
but everyone fights
right?
It’s healthy
to fight
and I just get him so
angry sometimes.
It happens, you know
And I am pretty stupid
like he says, you know,
He’s not wrong.
It’s okay.

No, he never hit me.
No,
of course not,
well, that one time
but I really got him angry that time.
I shouldn’t have broken that glass, you know,
it was expensive
and I just get him so
angry sometimes.
It’s okay.
It happens, you know.
It’s okay.

Yeah, I’m bleeding but
you know,
my body,
my soul
just does that sometimes.

And yeah, I’m here
but
not really.

EJZ 09.24.2015