Writing.....

Why "The Past is in the Past" Isn't Really True

Another pain shoots up my leg

Snaking between my thighs like a serpent

Spreading its venom through my veins.

Casually I squint my eyes and bite my lip

Just ever so slightly, as if I am engaged

In the conversation I am having with another,

So rudely interrupted by the fang sinking deep

Into my body like a terrible divining sword.

Keep talking, I say. What were you telling me?

They continue, as my mouth dries up

And the oasis is just a desert now

With thorns like daggers that have no

Respect for persons, for safety, for love;

I take a slow breath and stand up straighter

They mustn’t see the pain I carry so deeply

Nor hear the screams echoing in my mind

That haunt my memory like ghosts of ghosts;

They mustn’t see the sweat on his brow

Nor smell the repulsive odor on his breath

As I squeezed my long frame into a ball

On the night that refuses to leave me.

I smile, my eyes widening and filling up

The air hits them and dries them out so

Now they must cry by necessity, though

They have no permission from me to do so.

My legs tremble and my lip quivers;

Are you alright, they want to know

But I cannot tell them of my agony

They won’t begin to understand.

Age sets in so quickly, you know

You seem fine, you feel fine, but

Really you carry so much, so deep, so wide

Try your best to smile, to laugh, to live

Wake up and drag yourself up and begin

Born to be twenty and I feel like sixty

My heart cries rivers everyday my eyes cannot

You gotta keep going, give all you got to them all

They need you, you want so much to love them

But are you enough, you wonder as you struggle

This is my rhythm of minute-by-minute existence

Pain was the pen that wrote the song to which

I must dance, even when my feet are sore

The music my shell, the words my anthem.

One day I will be enough, be whole, be well

Hope truly is all that’s left behind in the broken

Crumbled, the blurry, the smudged, the scratched

What was taken is gone; what is stolen is lost

Forward, now, my girl; forward you must go

Beacon of resistance, spearhead of victory

Rise up. Become. Hold on.