Justice

Justice The day I decided you were a forgotten bit of past that wasnt’ coming back You did In the form of a text message reading “I like you alot but I don’t want jailtime” That was the day I realized wasn’t getting rid of you until I was eighteen years old Until It stopped mattering that I was “the girl who told” As if I’d tossed my virginity onto a highway of unsuspecting men, found the nicest one and pinned “Rapist” to his forehead. The days my rejection lived solely off your jail time I went home and ate a gallon of ice cream, screamed at your ghosts and punched back at your memory I don’t see the justice in my rape, being my crime You were tried in a court of legal terms and bullshit, plead guilty for 187 days and 1,000 bucks in payback for my therapy I was tried in a court of lies and social misconceptions, Plead innocent and found guilty as a lying slut snitch there was no doubt of our fornication only of my fourteen year old innocence The day a police officer asked me if I was forced I said No I said no because in the dark you whispered to me that this body was not mine to own The night I left with needle junkie thighs I know I said no, maybe i said “later” or “I need to think” but I know I didn’t say yes When I give the excuse “I was in love” People ask “What do you know about love?” I know i said no I know whatever love I knew fled that night Ran to tuck itself in at it’s corners and die of fright from the things it saw I know how I stared at your cealing tiles counting every one for what felt like hours I know how I used invisible thread to sew my mouth shut and thought over the same line from wuthering heights over, and over I know, when it was finally over I put on my clothes and let you drive me home. Crawled in my bed and clutched at the threads of what dignity I still owned When I said “I’ll love you forever” You said “I’ll love you until you give me a reason not to” What do you know abuot love? I know on the days parts of me died your eyes came alive You sucked my marrow until I was bone dry you taught me love existed behind clenched fists and pretty lies, that ours was a love that was more than love You love the way a dogfighter loves his pittbull What comes back bruised and bloody But with a pocket of survival a pocket of “I love you still” Your love was a cancer that rotted from the inside, undetected poisioned the soul and kiled with the slow grace of a panther. The only cure took my hair and never gave it back No scarf or wig to cover a shame I should not own On the day my excuse stops being “I was in love” I will have asked you “What do you know about love?”

Waffle house warriors

Waffle house warriors I know a group of girls Who write lists they’ll never stick to Make rules no one intends to follow because they are nothing if not wild They sit in waffle house booths, inject cancer into their lungs and drink straight caffine They fancy themselves damaged Secretly they hope for beautiful lives Lives after Texas, after the mess this place has made of them One, Calls them the waffle house warriors, the sisterhood of the traveling sluts She is a child, does not know how she will live without mommys rules Builds sandcastles out of ink, she is so young. Whens he was younger she found a boy in a mans body, this girl made a womans mistake. called a boy lover, secretly she named him salvation but his hands were soft and smooth she should have known he would not be her revolution Now she sits in waffle house with a book of poems she’ll never like The second has one booth, one spot where she can see everything, counts men like blackjack, she is alone somewhere in raising herself she has become someone else, someone hard and cold to anything too difficult her arms stuck in a constant state of pushing away she calls this survival, we know it as fear The third is a prized winning grand lotto of fucked up, she cries when it rains, when her cigarettes break in her pocket.. She walked a path, littered with broken promises and forgotten names, did shit she isn’t proud of but hey she did it, Hakuna matata man the past is the past. she is called broken, we know her as repaired They sit in a waffle house and dream of a forever they may never have Each one has a cuba, a castro to escape they board life boats, Rafts, old doors to float with their eyes set On the bright american Promise

Lines

Lines Do you teach your son that stop signs are just taunting him? Do you let him eat meat with his hands, digging his fingers into the secret, pure parts? In what universe does your morality work? When your sixteen year old daughter is being left in a bed at someone elses house, will you feel it? Will you fathers intuition kick in just in time to sense its own crime? And will you feel helpless behind those bars? start thinking about men with cars and strangers in dive bars all seeing a flank of meat? Why buy the cow if you get the milk for free? Why not just steal the cow? Rip its insides inside out and take what you want Did you father teach you about fumbling palms? Did he explain the word no? Or were you immune from the very start? Did you intend to play your part in the history of a girl so well? Decide you were better than a parade of feathers and make your scales stand out? On the night you took what wasn’t yours did you decided choice is for the older, the wiser? Whisper ‘respect your elders’ and keep on keeping on? Did you convince yourself you were doing good? Now, sitting before your ruined life do you want to take it all back? Or just wish you’d gotten just one more whack at the revolving door?

I'm cool

Two weeks after third grade started You left the G/T side of the playground to talk to me I was the only white girl in my class You were the only blind girl in our school Four days before I called you my friend Your grandfather died And you learned what loss really feels like I learned that even as a child I had so little Ability to comfort the lost The first summer of our friendship I spent a night at your house You taught me how to have a friend That didn’t just last the school day The summer we both worked in the library your cat died You learned of bad parenting, of people who could never grow up I still do not know how to comfort you Sometime in the weeks of endless summer we drifted I spoke too harshly You learned how to let go I still have not In the days before you turned fifteen I lost my virginity to a boy who sold oregano as weed In a backseat that smelled like baby powder and ganja I woke up the next morning wondering if you felt any different You learned that I was not the only friend you could have Sometime in the early morning Of a month that wasn’t quite warm but still wasn’t cold I stared at the ceiling of a man-child’s bedroom And thought about your dead cat About things that die and people who kill The next morning I saw you and wanted to say I finally found out what loss really feels like The summer you worked at the library alone I broke my head on another girl you learned the art of socialization of pretending to look people in the eye I learned the act of being alone You learned that you don’t always have to be The year that we read Shakespeare in class together I told you I was sorry We tried to recollect who we’d been But children grow up into women You kept the American dream While I smoked cigarettes in a waffle house The more things stay the same The more they seem to change

Huh

On the fourth day of your first job your rapist will order a pizza You will drop enough pans to make a scene and quietly, later you will cry in the bathroom. When you try to be so bad that they fire you it does not work so instead you look for reasons to quit The lazy bosses The minimum wage The grades that you made fall Or the bruises that suddenly pop up all over your body As if the ghost of his rage has returned to your skin The second time he comes in he will make eye contact And suddenly you are fourteen years old and have done something wrong Instead of screaming about the restraining order you will quietly finish your shift Drive over to the man who expects nothing of you and try to forget his face Not having another panic attack in his bed will be a major accomplishment Finally, when it seems he will never come again you will see him in the lobby Holding the hand of his lover, you can almost see the blue fingers on her upper arms You will drive to the house of a woman who understands and watch ariel On the way home you will stop to cry, do not feel concerned this is how you are supposed to react. Two days later a boy you once had a crush on will call You will meet over coffee and in the back of your car you will teach him what you have learned In the parking lot of your old elementary school As if the innocence you lost so long ago still lingered there.