How do you recover what is completely forgot?
What may have never even been there to lose?

Rape is a penetrating violation
but it sinks in with barbs
and comes out with soul,
psyche, maybe whatever
makes the undamaged happy.

Fuck that lie!

I don't believe the non-survivors,
have the benefit of bliss
anymore than I did. Life makes
survivors of every driver.

Whatever I lost,
I don't know what's gone.
I was too young to remember
my self before my trust
became a weapon
of self obliteration.

Yet, I've been told that I can take it back.
And I cried.
How do I take back what I've never seen?
I feel like a toddler told to climb
a rock wall without hand holds.
Where do I even begin?

There must've been some...
shape carved out of my soul
some remnants of what I was
but all I've ever felt was a lack.
The need to be what he wanted.

But I'm not smart enough
to piece out the puzzle
from the glue pieces in my box.
I lack the knowledge to be what was.

I must've been a child.
I've always hated children.
Is that why?
I couldn't make friends.
My only sense of a healthy kid
came from sitcom antics.
And my pranks always ended
with a belt and fawning with sorrys.

Do I drag out my inner Ron Howard
or Bart Simpson or Louise Belcher?
I don't want to be what my name
stands for. I want to be good.
But maybe that lost part
is just as bad as the rest. I should

give up on looking for better.
I'm alive. I suffer and I deserve
ever tear and scar. I've hurt
enough. No tale of ideal victim
fits my childhood or soul.

I'm a fool to think that I cry
because I deserve the hurt.
I have earned no sympathy,
when I habitually use pity
as a bomb sure as they smile.

I want to find the power
to push past but every interaction
is packed full of past shun-worthy
crimes, I stormed into life.

Yet, that storm
and my doubt
are skewed currents
in my brain routed
to a kid who knew
no safety or salvation
until I became this
unstable picture
of a paranoid shout!

My mind is wired hard to find fault
in every task I ever flounced. I called
friends and had them deny my crimes.
Moments misremembered had them
yelling when they were talking in jest.
I can toss sparklers to the lonely night
and burst through the smog clouds
or drive out and see the stars proud.

I am not what my abusers wanted.
I defied his mental prison.
I shattered his tale of inferiority
by being better at piecing together
clues in the world and in the books
he pretended to read. I suffered
when he only learned how to cheat.
I served my grind while he wasted time.

My last attempt at talking to his manipulative ass
had him coming to me to make sense of a math
theory. The ironic convergence of his absurd
conclusions, was to ignore holes and lines of broke
continuity. He thought with pride that we could
ignore what was missing and calculate the full.
But I have lived with those gruesome gashes
I can tell that they are bigger than infinitesimal.

I am not discontinuity.
I am not uniform
to his schemes of purpose.
I am negative
because there is shit in our sieves.
Every saint born with grace
must pass through
the filth of fuckers like him.
I am not a victim.

I am not a survivor.
I am a fucking human
and I don't need my old
life back. This one, right here,
has everything I hold dear.
It is a monument to my
determination and will
to thrive with love I trust,

because he
is no longer
in my life.
And my love
is vorpal-sharp;
like my mind.