Letters from sixteen

What's buried underneath

Poems about what is going unsaid.

Shaking hands
I do so much to keep things behind a locked bedroom door.
I sneak around and lie through my teeth.
Why would I want anyone to know?
The thought of someone seeing past me leaves my head spinning.
As much as I know this and as much as I tell myself otherwise, I wish someone would look at me and see that things have never been this awful.
When my hands tremble I sit on them, yet a part of me hopes someone would ask why I can't seem to keep them still.

Tonight
I feel like my skin is too tight.
I should have known better.
I shouldn't have just taken it like I did.
I should have done something.
But if it were that simple it would have been.
If I could just calm down like you said I would have.
No I won't relax, I'm a fucking forest fire, turn the other way for all I care but don't tell me not to be.
Don't act like any of this ever made sense.
Say whatever makes you feel like you've done something, maybe I'll pretend like it has, but don't be surprised when the son you failed to protect doesn't want anything to do with you anymore.
You're perfect, and I'm fucking crazy, so be it, but don't expect me to play the part for much longer.
I will be surprised if I make it to the summer, and if I do make it out of this, I'd rather be alone.
I'd rather live in my own little world than pretend like yours was worth anything to me.
I spent so long pretending, I still do, and maybe that will be the end, maybe I'll rot like an apple because I am not strong enough.
But if I am it wasn't because of you.
If I am able to hold on tight enough, because I very well may be able to, I want you to know you weren't a part of it.

Tomorrow
It's so strange to me knowing that most of this won't matter by next month.
With this warm feeling down my throat I know I may not even remember some of my worst moments.
I look back at my past wondering if any of it was real at all, today won't be an exception by tomorrow.

I wish it were different
What pushed me to speak about the abuse was the hope that things would be different.
That what had kept me drowning for so long wouldn't be a weight pulling me down below the surface anymore.
For a while it was promising,
They listened, believed, heard what I had to say.
I wrote about this relief I felt to finally be seen.
One hundred and eight days later it seems that hope has diminished with good reason.
Things are the same in nearly every way I hoped they wouldn't be.
The very people who vowed to protect me are trying to fix me, rather than do anything about that so-called son of theirs.
They tell me to talk about it with that therapist I see once a week, as if that will do anything about so much of this.
Do anything about the worry that he's out in the world, a world full of potential victims, that's all I ever was to him.
But he wouldn't do it again would he?
Like that would ease the sense that I will continue to suffer as he is doing good knows what with god knows who.
But you said he feels guilty doesn't he?
You told me today that you wished our family would find some peace, I agreed with you.
That's when you said you don't think I get it.
I don't get it?
As if I'm the one who's hurt this family.
As if I'm the one who touched a kid who had no means of escape.
I regret ever saying anything.
Because now everyone knows and nobody's changed.

Made to be, not born to be
I wish someone would write about the anger that may be the reason I don't make it through this lifetime as the light I am.
The anger that leaves me wondering if Jr. year will be my last.
I'm not hurting because I am in pain, I am not hurting because I asked for it
I am hurting because I was failed by every passerby who didn't think twice of the little girl who didn't want to be held.
I am hurting because everyone who was supposed to hold my hand through the journey was the hand that struck me.
These people who are supposed to love me act as if I am simply in a sense of inherent pain.
Like I was born to wonder if I shouldn't have been.
I am not this way because I choose to hurt.
I am this way because you left me in the woods, maybe you were the bear, maybe you were the one who turned a blind eye.
I was not made to suffer, and I was not created to hurt in this way, you did this, or at the very least didn't do anything to stop it.
Of course I'm shaking with rage.
Why would I not be?