so tired of remembering
when the older boy asks me if i know what 69ing is,
i tell him yes. because i want to look mature in his eyes,
to be so knowledgeable and easy to hang out with,
to live up to my reputation of being old for my age; i lie.
i tell him yes.
he says he did it once with a girl at camp
and was going to ask me to try it with him but won't
because i am only eight. instead, just a kiss will do.
he'll give me my toys back if i do it.
he'll never ask again if i do it.
it will be our secret for no one to know,
especially not his dad or my sister, he says.
it's only fair, he says.
i do not even know how to kiss,
but i agree so he will hand me my toy back.
i think i am speedy because i can run a half mile
in minutes i can count on my fingers, but speed
is no match for hunger. the speed and stealth of a child
is only real in the imagination. my body, less than four
feet high, is only real in the imagination.
to feel the writhing of an unwanted body on yours
is to disappear for a moment,
to replace fight or flight with freeze,
to catch a glimpse of an empty alternate universe
where all you see are snapshots of
his eyes flashing over and over.
i have grown so tired or rewriting this story.
i have grown so tired of remembering, so tired
of pretending it matters then pretending it doesn't.
i am tired of being an unvictim, never raped,
just stolen out of my body for a time.
every once in a while, i google search the things
he did to me just to verify if it's okay for me to be sad.
i'm sorry for always writing this,
and i am sorrier still
that you have read it.
YOU ARE READING
Moments Belonging to No One: A National Poetry Month Chapbook
PoetryApril is National Poetry Month, and I have decided, in honor of the month, to write 30 poems for each of the 30 days. A lot happened in my life throughout this month. Mostly what I wrote about was heartache, breakups, exhaustion, and the way life mo...
