When I talk about my rape people tell me to talk about something else,
something less of a drag
Like they're telling me to be quiet.
But I have been quiet for much too long
When I was five my stepfather told me it was our little secret
When I was ten, and my mother asked him all the worst things about me
Because she was jealous
When my grandfather took me in, and didn't understand
Didn't understand that I had been cracked from the ages of 5 to 11
And now that I finally have the mind to think about it I am shattering
I was quiet when my therapist asked me when it first happened
Because I didn't know
And I was quiet when the police asked me the same question
And I did not know
Because the strange thing about trauma is that if it hurts
you bad enough, your brain automatically blocks it out.
But they don't know that, and they don't understand it.
Because if something that traumatic happened to you, “how could you forget it”?
I was quiet when I was left by the remnants of his hunger
Like a dinner plate with no food
Because everything had been taken from me.
I was quiet when I started my first year of high school and a boy forced himself on me
He called it “having fun”
I couldn't call it anything
Because I could not speak
I am quiet when I dont tell my brother that the open bedroom door makes me nervous
That biting into an apple makes me physically sick sometimes
That the texture of my clothes on my own skin feels foreign
I am quiet when they tell rape jokes at my school and call it “spicy”
Because like a pepper, it hurts me, but causes no physical damage.
I am quiet when I hide in my closet, because even if my stepfather is half a country away, I still prepare for his next attack.
But he doesn't know
That his hands on my mouth never silenced me
That I have a voice, and being quiet has not worked out well for me in the past
So don't you dare tell me
That what I'm talking about is a drag
Or that it kills the mood
Or that I shouldn't have to talk about it in order to feel like it really fucking happened
And don't you dare talk over me because you don't like it, because I when I am talking this openly all I should hear is my own voice and
Quiet.