“Give me a world, you have taken the world I was.”
— Tag, Anne Carson
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baby
when i was twelve i wanted to be a bad girl
the sort of girl who didn’t ask questions (“where are we
going?”) who didn’t need safety
so i got drunk in bathrooms with the girls who
wore short skirts in winter just to be seen
& because i grew up too pale, too skinny,
grew up like that kind of weed
in the garden strangers didn’t pick up but promised
“one day that will be the prettiest,”
because i grew up like the kind of girl who knew
how to take care of children
only because i’d never been one, because i grew up
with my hands in my mouth, grew up like the kind
of girl who didn’t speak until someone said “maybe she can’t
hear us,” grew up
like the kind of girl only sad old men
wanted to touch i wanted
to be the worst one, wanted to be
the girl who had the least amount of
myself to carry around so i started giving bits
of everything to boys,
thought i’d be less heavy if i could
breathe into the ones who carried horror stories in books
that were thicker than mine the first i remember had eyes
that could see you naked even when
the sweater sleeves wet with snot hid your skin,
dull green, sleepy, & when they looked at my body
they looked bored, i thought
so instead of “please stop” i said “bring
your friends & i will do
whatever you want”
started breaking things like i did when i was little,
threw my same fits but even then was too ruined to be a queen,
crawled at sixteen, asking for my mother
on the floors of other people’s parties, saying
“mama,” since there was no other word
that made sense when everyone else
stood on something solid & i didn’t,
when i started getting
hit i started to say it over & over but i close
my mouth faster now, i don’t scream loud,
years after it happened i
could talk in real sentences, like my voice needed time to make
space for something other than his name to take shape
& burst
out, burst in, big, & i was
a virgin, never let that go until i was gone
& some things are stolen
before you even notice they’re
missing, after all the boys
on the playground saw me i started sitting
in all of their laps, kept that
secret like a severed head i’ve only shown
the boys who came after, the ones who said
“forever” & i said it back but
never meant it, always knew since
i was small that a boy was soft until he was hard & far
away, always knew that boys run faster than me,
didn’t know not to chase them & broke bones
collapsing in ditches, knew
i had a body i could will not to bleed
& a face that didn’t bruise easily so i kept going
i know that a boy has something hidden
like a prayer if you believe in
god & can stay on your knees,
keep your eyes from watering
long enough to make him explode, like fire or rain
you can’t tell but it covers your face just the same & if you
smile through what he brings
if you think you’re happy, if you think he won’t leave
you’ll see stars
like the movies go on about,
but the bad girl gets the whole bad world, black, moonless,
no bedtime story, no daddy to tell it again & again
& there is no man pure enough to love
coming for me
at the end of everything
some girls grow up into women, get married in
white dresses, like angels, are
kissed, are dead,
are warm where they live
look clean,
look whole, holy
not me
“You owe no one an explanation for who you become after you are traumatised.”
— Nikita Gill, 21 Powerful One Sentence Reminders To Read When You Are Doubting Your Growth And Healing (via weltenwellen)