If I could tell you
marry the words
match the soul void
If only…
Why do you pull away
suddenly?
Shrink from my touch
love?
If you could just see
Read my lips
see my soul cry
for love…
Where did you go, my love,
Once more ‘gain?
Shrink a-way from
love?
If I could just say
the right words
It’s not me and
neither you
Together
each alone
wondering why
both searching for something better.
That’s the strength
of our
Love
Ink blotted canvases
filled with words of
despair and anger,
mixed with an
overwhelming sense
of anguish.
Admittance and guilt
is shown through the
poor excuses of a man.
Should’ve, could’ve, would’ve,
but didn’t know better.
Or rather, knew better but
ignorance stepped in,
shadowing any sense of
wrongdoing and
inappropriateness;
slicing ties of trust that
once were inarguably
bright for all to see.
Now, dull and faint,
nonexistent; severed ties.
The places I once stood
weak and frail with fear
enveloping my figure,
I now stand with empowerment.
My dignity returns.
My worth returns.
My power returns.
New found strength grows
thicker within and I roar,
“No more!”
Author Statement
I had confronted my latest abuser of six years via a written letter, detailing all of the events and how each circumstance affected me. My abuser responded by expressing apologetic guilt while noting no recollection of these events nor his behaviour. This poem is the outcome of confronting him and taking back my power.
Still, I find them in their prisons, but they love me...
I ask them to show me how they got there.
Their distress and nightmares become mine...
Some places we glimpse and run, they are too dangerous...
We escape to favourite places and bask in the warmth of safety and peace.
Mostly, we discover the need to assuage their wounded hearts
We rebuild their memories and fill them with love and tenderness.
They hide things still...they have so much shame...or I cannot see.
Even when we are stuck, we still bond...we swim in healing waters.
We fight, we rage, we tantrum, take vengeance...find empowerment.
We replay history and reclaim their losses.
They find safety, love, community, acceptance...
I sigh...reset...one hole filled.
That sword stops stabbing.
An organ is less tainted...some poison is sifted out
Those banal words and predicaments can be a part of my life
A moment relieved of possession...I am eradiated.
I smile...a freedom to exist, to stand straight and tall.
Author Statement
The poem is a reflection on my process of doing inner child meditations to reparent and reimagine safety and reclaim needs that were never provided. This poem is one of seven other poems reflecting on my inner child work and focuses on the phase where I was learning to use meditation to find pain relief from triggers. I learned my back pain is caused by an aroused emotion trapped in my body and that meditation could provide the underlying need that my emotion wanted to experience to find relief. This poem describes the process of finding my inner children in spaces of deprivation, rescuing them, and providing a safe space to meet their needs. The conclusion conveys my experience of releasing tension to find relief from chronic back pain and the joy of experiencing no triggers in a historically triggering moment. I have just completed a book of seven poems with a collection of drawings called “My Left Hand is Talking, My Right Hand is Nurturing,” that chronicles this process of using inner child meditation to heal and find relief of the symptoms of abuse.
As I watch a man steal fruit on the corner
of Myrtle Ave and Broadway, I want to know
what to do with the memory, days of the week
underwear, the hand cupping the small cones
over my grey t-shirt, feeling
for the raised tip, pink eraser bud not yet
brown. I try to remember what was on TV,
my sister’s back to us, her flipping the channels, the screen
turning black for a second in between Fox News, This Old House,
and Wishbone. Maybe he touched me to reruns
of The Brady Bunch, how I never trusted the father
in a room with them, the girls, especially
Cindy with the blonde pigtails, her blue stare like knowing
her weight, light enough to hold down
with just a forearm. It didn’t matter that it was a Tuesday
in August, he played with the planets on the edge
of my cotton briefs, the rings of Saturn
for Saturday. Mars was for Tuesdays.
Mars was for Wednesday mornings and sometimes
Wednesday afternoons before someone told me
to shower. Mars was for spilled Hawaiian punch
on Jupiter, or laundry days on Mercury.
Mars was for me and the mirror,
when I’d push aside the fabric and see the sprouts
of fuzz, black stubble of strawberry
in the thief’s hand, rubbing the skin with a dry
finger, how hungry to steal just one.
The melons would have told, I’m sure.
Author Statement
For almost two decades, I had been trying to write a poem about my sexual abuse trauma, but it was difficult for me to access the part of my brain that could write about this topic in a “poetic” way. I often found myself very much the little girl again, frozen and unable to speak. My poem “Picked” starts with a random observation: “As I watch a man steal fruit on the corner/ of Myrtle Ave and Broadway,” because I did indeed witness a man stealing fruit from Mr. Kiwi’s fruit stand on my walk home from the subway one day after work. I quickly wrote it down in my notes, never imagining this would be my way into writing the poem. But this is how I live my life: perpetually writing down observations because I know this is how my poems are born. When I sat down to write with this particular observation in mind, I didn’t know at first where I would be headed. Trauma often works this way: something small, something seemingly innocent can bring it all back, leaving me feeling out of control. But by choosing my own triggering entrance, I had control of the narrative. Though I could not change the past, I was gifting myself the agency to explore it on my terms. Using an external event outside my trauma felt like a safer approach in which to discuss it. As I started writing, I was surprised at the connections I discovered between the memory and witnessing this small theft of the strawberry. Was I just a “small theft” to my abuser? I would never know the answer to that question, but it was a question that still required my investigation. As a survivor, what could I do with this memory? And what was my responsibility to my present self and the little girl? It was an important part of my healing process to write this poem, as both the poet and the survivor. I could not separate the two. So I created a space in which both could be present, a space in which language and truth both mattered. Diannely Antigua’s book Ugly Music, can be purchased at the following links:
