Insect innocence

Drink the poison from my blood, breathe the rot from my lungs. Take all that has been decaying inside me and nurse it to health like an injured bird. A child who was once pure, turned sour like a piece of fruit rotting under the summer sun. Ice in her veins, frozen over from fear. Her days numbered, belief she is dying. Can’t speak her through, his seed on her school uniform. A child should be safe in her own home, her own room, her own body. Absent from class, lying on top of him, crying into daddy’s chest. Begging mama to take the pain from my chest. It hurts she says. I feel guilty she bleeds. He takes her innocence and scatters it into his evening memories, his aged hand around his part. Pigtails no longer feel safe, pulling the hair ties out. A child looking in the mirror, she can’t see her girlhood. She sees him. His hands. His warm breath on a cold day in December. The front seat of his car with her booster seat set up. She was too young to be in a moving vehicle without a height adjustment, justify that to yourself as a sign that she was ready for her cherry to be lost in the sea of you. Dancing with the enemy, holding her breath as the bond with intimacy is pried from her tiny fingers. She tries to fill the hole, bridge the gap with liquor. Take the thoughts away with men who portray safety. I’m here at twenty one, but I’m still that eight year old girl. I want to give her a pearl necklace, feed her ripe fruits and tell her she was never rotting. The decaying feeling wasn’t her fault. It was never her fault. She doesn’t feel guilt. She feels shame, but the preteen princess has nothing to be ashamed about. There is no crime in being a victim. Twenty one, unable to remember most of the adolescence. She sees the infestation in her wrists, cutting them open to bleed out cockroaches. The violence is an outcry, they say you mustn’t hurt yourself. Why didn’t they care when he hurt her? Tell me father above, how can I speak when I want to shout? Because I have lived thirteen years in whispers and my roar is aching to be heard. How can I heal when I want to hurt? How can I forget when I want to remember? He’s on his knees, repenting. You’ll forgive him though right? His deceit is acceptable if he tells you he’s sorry. ‘Sorry’ is for accidentally sleeping in, it’s for missing your curfew and forgetting to give your friend’s shirt back. It’s not for stealing my childhood. Embezzle me in enlightenment lord. His doleful first wife, painted in purple. The burn in my chest, searing through the skin in my back. Can you smell the rotting flesh or the smoke? The millipedes crawl through my seared skin. The worms in my brain quiver at my quietness. They chew at my frontal lobe, eating what was left of any chance of a normal life. When the nausea overpowers me like a tidal wave I take a deep breath, silently scream letting out the insects. Free to roam as you are.