In response to the old dudes who made YouTube videos complaining that I write too many poems about rape:
I know you think that I talk too much.
I know you don't think this is what a pleasant survivor is supposed to sound like.
I know you are threatened because I am a thunderstorm of a woman with so much to say, do you know how long it took me to say anything at all?
Sometimes I worry I write too much about assault.
I worry this is too heavy a burden to talk about, I worry I am putting too much responsibility on you, the listener.
But when I talk about my trauma, I am not asking you to carry it or relieve me from it.
I am just asking for it not to be too heavy for a conversation, This experience takes up so much space inside of me.
And this stage is the only space I can let this trauma live outside of my body, there is no socially acceptable time or place to talk about rape.
I realized this at a party I didn't want to be at, dizzyingly drunk.
Someone asks how I'm doing and his name spills from my mouth into a puddle of vomit on the floor, I apologize and apologize and apologize until the host says "Shoot girl, is sorry the only word you know how to say?"
Suddenly I am the embarrassed girl crying in the bathroom at the party because I made the mistake of speaking about what happened to me at what was supposed to be a happy occasion.
I am afraid of wearing my recovery too publicly.
I noticed people only stopped calling me victim and started calling me survivor when I stopped talking about it.
And I have stopped bringing flowers to the grave of the teenager I used to be back when I had orchids in my hair and polka dots on my shoes, bubbling over with light, I used to refuse to wear the dress I was assaulted in.
I used to imagine it draped in a sash of caution tape because it was the only witness.

I threw the underwear away.

I didn't want to write a statement, or file a report, I wanted to take a shower.
I want to scream "my statement is that I stayed here in this body" but every day I find new ways to heal.
I wear the dress I was assaulted in and don't associate it with him just to remind myself, he doesn't own a single fucking part of me.
I found a way to heal through the poetry.
This stage is the only place I could tell my story where it wasn't a burden I was putting onto anyone, This stage is where I learned to stop hoarding my suffering and I could give a fuck about a slam score.

This is me healing.
This is me reclaiming ownership over my body, this is the only place I have control over the narrative and he cannot interrupt me.
Even though trauma has a way of becoming the wallpaper of my head, watch me drag the art from my suffering, watch me plant seeds down my spine into a garden of poetry from every horrible thing that ever happened to me, every night my voice turned into cement and I couldn't say anything.
Watch me build an empire from the ashes of every single thing that ever tried to destroy me.

Thank you.