Accepting what I cannot

Pinky promise

A thousand hands have been around my throat

A thousand more I have yet to know

Pill bottles to hold a past lover's coke

Velvet sheets camouflage the blood it soaks

A fence of soldiers around my father

Protected from the ungrateful daughter

These pills make my head feel raped

Numbing the stabs of knives, he called pranks

Cinnamon to hide that he's sick

To sweeten the sting of a finger prick

A choir of angels drop to their knees

Singing "daddy won't you please...

Remove the shackles from my ankles

Keeping me chained to my babies cradle"

I don't want to know my dead child's name

I had hopes for the life that had yet to develop a brain

Her burden is not mine to hold

I'm relieved she is not mine to hold

I am in agony...

For she is not mine to hold

He felt as if my pain was getting old

Fed me plan B and Tylenol

So, I hid behind validation

The idea of acceptance roofied into my medication

I'd do anything for adoration, so I swallowed his antidepressants

Afraid of the bitterness packed in his medicine

I took his pills for I am brave

I took his pills, so he didn't have bullet shells for brains

Asked his therapist how to bring Koren back from the dead

To be told my daughter would've been all that I've had left

That I would be stuck protecting her from monsters

Stuck clenching my jaw until my words felt softer

Till they poured out like honey and made her grandmother accept me

A false sweetness Jennifer drinks with morning coffee

I want soft hands around my throat

I want the storms to leave me soaked

I want to feel as if I am important

That I am more than the pain of a spontaneous abortion

That I am more than the names my fathers called me

More than losing my job in a hotel lobby

I want to be more than finding my religion

I do not want advice I just want you to listen

To understand why I am so Goddamn afraid

To let you into my hiding place

And I need you to promise before you love me

You won't run after you get to know me