Write What You Know
People always say write what you know
What I know is that I feel empty at 5PM even though my loneliness isn’t as romantic as when the clock strikes 2AM
What I know is that I fill other people’s cups so full that when the pitcher gets to me it is empty
What I know is that I kissed your lips so many times that I’ll never be able to forget you
What I know is that I made you the universal name for all the people that made me love them in crooked arms and limbs
I’ve become so many things over time
Yet what I do not know is how you could stand up and leave
What I do not know is how my mother could hurt me so much
What I do not know is how he could have done those things to me
And now I’m crying in your arms trying to forget his touch
And you ask me if I got hurt
And I say yes
And you ask me if someone hurt me
And I say yes
And I become this shell of a person who’s unsure of their own value and dissolving into your arms for security
Because his twisted touches destroyed my purity
And now you and all the other yous before and after this
Will need to learn not to touch me on certain days
And I will have to explain to them why I am afraid of the dark and why I seem to only sleep at 4 o’clock
But I never acknowledge that the monster was under my own roof
Because not even God can make this world monster proof
And I am so afraid that one of the yous will become a him
Because graphs and charts and statistics show that we seek what destroyed us and he destroyed me
And I am trying to write what I know
But all I know is that my mother left
And he left me vacant
And you are standing on the corner of here and gone
And I am so afraid
I am so desperate
To know that someone will stay
That you will stay
That my value will be exponentially higher than 1
That my love will mean something to someone
That my skin will someday feel normal when touched by a man’s hands
Because I am falling rapidly down a rapid hole of love for you
And there are no handrails on the sides
But I’m still standing here 7/10 in love with you
2/10 in love with the you before you
1/10 in love with who I could have been if my body had not been used
But the fractions and phrases and poetry cannot save me from the nightmares and triggers and the feelings of being abused
But if I write and I write what I know
Then I pray I can write him away
and I can write you in
And write the me I am becoming in
Because my heart has so many eraser marks on it that a teacher would tell me to rewrite it
Life is filled with befores and afters
But I don’t want you to ever end
I am standing here composing a better story for myself
Yet I still can’t reach whatever’s on that shelf
If I drew a monster it would look like him
If I drew a monster’s master it would look like my mother
I cannot put a postmark on recovery
I cannot mail it for a speedy delivery
I cannot call it by name
But all I know is that I’m not the one to blame
So I am getting out of bed everyday
I am watching the sun rise and set at bay
I am becoming
I have been
I will be
Not the things that have happened
But the things I decided I needed to be
These things don’t include Pretty
or proper or poised or sexy or beautiful or shy or unintelligent or bold
Because I got tired of trying to be the walking definition of the phrase dream girl
I got tired of destroying myself trying to find a reason why he did it
I got tired of trying to explain evil
Because evil does not have a name
It is the creeping thing in the night that makes you run up the stairs when you turn off the light
Evil doesn’t have a home
It sleeps under your bed and behind your closet doors
And evil doesn’t have a cure
And neither does depression
And neither does the feeling you get when you tell your boyfriend what really happened
But we all possess hope
We all believe the mail will come tomorrow
And that Christmas will be good
And that there is an end to all our stress and sorrow
And we believe that there is a greater amount of good than evil
And we believe that tomorrow can be better
Tomorrow will be better
And I will wake up to you
And I will bury the him that still chases me in the night
And I will love myself before I love music or pictures or poetry
Because things are getting better
And this is me writing what I know.