Confrontation flows within me like a scratch

Of claws ripping at a brick wall.

I'd much rather slink away and pretend

That I am not wounded and that you did not rend

Me into this chaotic dysfunction I am today.

But I cannot evade the pain within.

It lives here inside this hole that you created in lust.

And I must patch it with whatever I have to hand

And in doing, kill the horror, wipe out the demons

And thrive once more.

As a child, I began to fill it with rags, stuffing cotton into

The crevice of shame. I threw in dry plaster and soaked it in tears.

And then I turned away, even as the cotton fell and the rags turned to rot.

I left myself open, gaping wide and denied the wound in shame.

I walked, crippled, and you were the phantom

Who screamed inside my head when it was darkest,

And I most blind. And though the violation was

Yours, I sought everywhere for forgiveness through acceptance.

Yet finally I began to see that the hole remained

Though I pretended it did not. It's edges were black

And stank with puss. And looking inside, the salt of my tears

Revealed to what degree the decay reached.

And gathering my tools of surgery I prepared to penetrate deep.

Fearfully, I gathered rocks about me, stuffed them in pockets

And gathered up my skirt, like an apron, exposing myself

To you, to fill the hole, and repair what you had destroyed.

I screamed and threw these rocks, as if to fill the hole

And they bounced off of you, as if you were rubber.

If you cared. If you were effected, I did not know.

But your eyes told me that you knew, even as

Your lips denied your wreck of me.

I could not effect you. But the hole I could fill, despite you,

Filling it and building a new foundation, repairing

What you took, creating solidity out of destruction

And in that process, you have become dead to me.

No longer family.