Sell a bit
If You are reading this it is because I have
—————————————————————
Imagined
and for that
I am not sorry
something more
selfish, sordid
i made you God
still sought approval unconditionally
Masked Messiah
suffer myself a sacrifice
bodywine
drink me
turned flesh to food
cummed you young
a gain
swallow remembrance
finger choke imprints
i will not
i will
not
i
will
not
age when I ———————-
when the days don’t stick
and I wake less
versed in
afterlife
more sure
it means is was
nothing
blackout bastion
pass round baskets
of her, eating slow slurp
salty crystal thighs
dry mouth chew
Feel every bit/e
knee ground knee
hands clench
say thanks for A men
Tithe me to the promise
of return
of expansion
100-fold me in half
Scatter seed mes and pray twisted weeds that choke won’t reach
your fruit
and all are welcome
trade for confession
of lust want
trade for attention
for words that mean you’re pretty
till I believe it
don’t believe it
won’t
learn(ed)
if I say yes
with my insides
you’ll k/no/w
if I say yes
no no’s can be ignored
if I say yes
my bruises are consensual
sensual
sexual
since you will
And you will
fuck me
if you and i lock eyes too long if i forget to notice
cause you could
or couldn’t tell
whatif she wanted
call me perfect as it happens
make me feel the special I want
I won’t
and how do you trust
others’ truths when all
yours aren’t
and how can I breathe life back
with this breadth?
chase it like I need ——————- it catches up
cause
“if you are not sex you are silent” surface serve as nothing
cause
“If I want to leavestay I need reason” seasoned sees them seize them
And I have no use for things that cannot
simultaneously
occupy and excavate
And
if I close my eyes
you all feel the same
And
If they’re open
you all
Fill—
the same
shut up sexy wobbly whimsy sweetened shuffles through midnight streets to early morning exits pretend you do or don’t. remember. pretend you could couldn’t have stopped if you wanted. pretend. it’s enjoyable. pretend. you like sex. pretend. you’re empowered. pretend. you’re in power. pre t– end.
Proof
body rotting
sticky between legs and breasts under arms around knees behind neck
salt white trail from eye to ear
flaky residue wades in red
new blindness
i was naked still
completely covered by him
he was beside me when i woke up
bright outsides and i found myself alive
wristslips and legs throbbed
someone had removed my insides
don’t look down i would be missing
cut
out
ripped the teeth of this man
sleeping
he should have eaten me whole
he didn’t
didn’t run didn’t hide slept
faint smile
forming in the corners
wrapping around his body
stretching around his shoulders
mocking me motionless
held body like a towel held it like a blanket held it like a lifeboat
left shoes left self left room
didn’t shut the door too loud
left cracked
someone
sneak in
rape him
sneak in
suffocate him
sneak in
burn it all him as kindling fire to everything everyone
meincluded
erase erase erase us all negligible forgettable
name it tragedy
make them weep
for the way i lost my life
Dr. Elle MSW, LCSW
taught me how to cheat. how to see another woman and never give her a name. never talk about the moments we shared or how we changed each other. explain away hours of my week and wash away the residues that come with coming out of myself.
taught me how to get naked. drop both hands to the side. let you see me. pushpress, how ever deep you need. how to open up to strangers and leave a room pretending i was okay. pretending our time hadn’t unearthed a history that the present had no space for. how to look someone in the eyes, with a smile, and announce that i was better/ready/changing/fine. not going to do something dangerous
to myselfor others.
taught me how to lie. how to fake my own presence. disconnect time from space, time from understanding. how to pause stories, his, her, my, story, press play next time i see you. how to live in a past, fully, freely. erasing only
details that make me too weak. too wrong. too much. too real. how to stop being without an audience.
taught me how to hide in full view. how to jot lists of sins in dear diary’s you grade with red ink scribbles and slow nods. how to be statue still, make a cast of me, Wong Baker masks of me.
taught me uncovered penance. clonazepam hail marys. repeat as needed. don’t stop til you feel better. til you feel nothing.
Before the university counselor assigned to me in response to my sexual assault ‘complaint’ knew how to correctly pronounce my name, she had diagnosed me with PTSD, Depression, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I had to wait, in the thick silence of being renamed this way, as she jotted down her rudimentary guesses and made plans to send my file off to her colleague who would, she assured me, help me out with a dose of Klonopin or Sertraline (she was open to experimenting) large enough to make waking life more “bearable.”
What she and the drugs and the nebulous feeling of being both powerless and neglected provided, was numbness. A deep, hard-to-shake notion that my body was a thing to be played with, experimented on, and handed back to me when everyone was done.
These pieces are my delayed rebellion to permitting my abusers- therapist, rapist, and maladaptive schemas included- to make decisions for me. I internalized their truths about me and it took years to unlearn the helplessness they inspired. These poems are about the synergies of trauma. How swiftly and effortlessly one assault can, when unquestioned and silenced, beget the next. I used these poems to name what happened to me: my words, my reactions. It is not the final step in my healing, rebellion, or recovery but I trust it is an important one.
—
I am so honored to be a featured writer with Madwomen in the Attic. Conversations around mental health, whether of praise or doubt, fear or allegiance are necessary. Numbness isn’t progress. Functioning is not synonymous with health. I appreciate contributing to a resource that understands this and continuously explores the industry of mental health.
Ngozi Oparah is a queer, first-generation, Nigerian-American born and raised in the suburbs of Atlanta. Ngozi has spent much of her professional career as an educator— teaching art and English in both community and university settings; a researcher; a mental health advocate and counselor; and an artist. Ngozi has self-published works of poetry and fiction and is interested in how the tenets of narrative therapy and philosophy can inform writing, storytelling, and individual and community healing. She serves as the Director of Community Programs at StoryCenter, a non-profit digital storytelling agency based in Berkeley. She currently lives in Oakland, CA. B.S, Neuroscience, Duke University; MFA, Writing, California College of the Arts.
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