Tag: trauma

What they don’t tell you

Prose poetry in three movements

What they don’t tell you (movement one)

…is that you’ll be clutching at the edges of life, ripping nails clean from your nail bed, leaving bloodied fingertips too wet to grasp ledges. What they don’t tell you is that it’s a loss, nobody tells you that you’ll rake the fur lined, dust coated carpets for powdered residue, that you’ll sneak into friends’ bedrooms just to hold their prescription Endone in your hands, just because…

because there is hope in the holding.

What they don’t tell you is that instead of poppy seeds, you’ll be downing opened bottles of Jacob’s Creek Chardonnay, three months opened and more vinegar than wine, that you’ll be eating when your body is not hungry, grease drenched burgers and cardboard fries, but that there is more than one type of hunger. And you’ll run by the river, through muddy, waterlogged grass, around and around soccer fields until your knees lock in protest and the lactic acid paralyses your calves.

That when you can no longer run, you will crawl home and lie on your rug weeping, that the weeping will collect in a pool around your foetal form. What they don’t tell you is that sobriety is grief-stricken, a period of mourning.

That gear was a life partner that held you,

and that person is no longer there.

What they don’t tell you (movement two)

….is that your skin will curl and break, that wounds will weep, and an infection will break, that the compulsion to create will seep from your body. Boils will open and pus will leak, and you will write in a way that you have never written,

in between students and clients, on office note pads, with scratchy ballpoint pens, on pizza take away menus and envelopes screaming overdue bills,

you’ll write

in a grasping, clutching way, and you’ll be driven to sound, to rhythm, to the edges of life, that your ears will sharpen to your violin, attune to the hidden notes on that fretless instrument you play. That your ears will recognise that B is shrill, stern like an old school ma’am, that D is resonant but calm, a yogi and

these are moments you don’t crave opiates,

moments of softness or heart, your cat’s paws on your chest for instance, a friend who buys you Thai chilli basil tofu and steamed rice for lunch, and laughter,

yes laughter, untethered.

What they don’t tell you (movement three)

They use the word clean, but that’s a misnomer, as though passing a drug test means your body is free of the impurities and that’s not true,

the body remembers.

cells remember.

And how can they not remember flesh breaking and heart calcifying and a child running to the corners of breathing so nobody can break her further

Flesh and bone hold your own trauma and the cells your parents’ and grandparents’ trauma. And what do you do with this epigenetic fate?

You pick up your violin and play the saddest of scales, D minor, the musical key for dirges and laments until your neighbour bangs on your ceiling and you stop, but the knowledge is there. You’re working out how to live with the library of knowledge trapped in subcutaneous fat, you’re working out how to hold yourself when gear was the only love who knew how to hold you.

reasons for not returning*

*a letter to my mother

because this is the nature of our dance
I step out of time and then you yank me into place
to always feel hunted,
because my earrings, junk shop, metal, painted teal and gold
offend you and still 
my thoughts are too silent for you to grasp 
and my denim is ripped, and my eyes are kohl rimmed and aside from 
liner I wear no other makeup and I am too much gypsy punk for 
your boomer aesthetic
and I collect degrees like magazine coupons
so you can be proud 
though my bank account is in arrears and 
yes of course I am still 
not good enough

because I have spent years stripping the interior of my skull
removing thoughts that were not my own with scraper and acetone and forever chemicals 
that may one day command my cells to grow uncontrolled
because my heart is smeared 
across the brass bedframe you slammed
me against and I am too weak
too shameless 
to wipe away my own blood 
and I am still searching for cleavers that you hid around the house
or that kitchen knife for boning chicken and cutting pork
when you invited me to die with you
and I was only 7, maybe 8-

and because maybe you knew 
and maybe you didn’t
anyway, I forgive you, I forgive you
because how would you know, really know 
even though there were whispers and warnings 
but he always took me in the shadows cast by 1970s home décor
a crystal green disco ball that cast lurid pools 
contracting with the edges to never tell
so how could you know
about that architecture 
that interior aesthetic
breaking a child against the canary yellow walls
beige carpet/
tan bedpost/
cream door frame/ teak bed head
pink satin coverlet he held me down upon until
I finally screamed but by then I had fractured into carbon
and nobody listens when dust begins to speak

because you loathe me even though the science says 
a child alters its mother in the womb
chimera cells so the mother is also child
because this is how I speak now and do you remember
the gaffer tape plastered on my mouth, my arms, legs, torso
bound tight with orange sisal rope for tying boar and game
and because it started then, the words filling up 
the cavities in my mouth, the hollows of my throat
and I couldn’t speak or move
eventually the words leaked through my skin
lacerating into scar tissue and cigarette burn craters
and though I couldn’t speak I learned to write
I couldn’t stop writing
because you said ‘what can I say you are/ what profession/what worth’
when I studied literature instead of law,
because what can you say I am?
I cannot stop writing/ is all I am
I am simile/syllable/syntax
I scribble into voluminous sound
my fingers are always screaming.