cessation

bahie.

but i think i'm going to show you. 

and the world can see it, because that's how toxic

how disgusting

what shit

you ground into me.

such utter disrespect

and i wanted you to be free. but you indicted me and wanted to leave me with my abduction

when i

have fought. and clawed. and found my way to a beautiful poet, you.

not to be smeared into something i am not.

not to be thrown into the deepest ocean and told i owe $62.37 for swimming lessons. 

harlot

when i was fifteen a boy at school, jason kulchinsky, started calling me a harlot. sometimes a couple dozen times in a row.

i went to a residential high school; this was routine at dinnertime. "harlot harlot harlot harlot harlot."

i was only 15. i had never even been kissed.

he did this for at least two years. yes. two. he was a grade above me. so two.

turned out it was because he had a crush on me. it was cruel.

but maybe now i need it. 

i'm trying to make things right with dee. i know i'm acting like a classic victim. i'm watching myself do it and my heart and brain are screaming, "stop! why are you letting him deny everything?"

but i am not capable of being with someone...and i can't even understand why you want me to be. i know i somehow destroyed my favorite friendship

pregnancy

he's 23 and wants a baby

says he has trauma like mine

that he gets flashbacks going down on women too soon

i told him if he ever has flashbacks i'll give him all the time

he needs

to get out (and no, i don't want this, i don't want him 

i want to move to poland but you're too scared of me

for me to try)

because both of the men i love

yelled at me and said i had to be myself NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW

and made it so much worse and turned and walked away saying

my flashbacks meant i wasn't good enough

and left me bleeding

oh, a baby would keep me from anything 

everything

keep you safe from me

dee

 he says it was all consensual

and he's so angry with me

but i see the same in you

you refuse to let me be me

you two cause me such searing pain and break my identity

and then tell me my identity isn't real

if i could just hide in this, in dee

i could be strong

writhing

 all night.

how could you be my abuser

i have lost purchase 

of my

of everything

i can't bear it

dee won't take me back

i could hide there 

vomit

 i can't stop throwing up

it's only been eight hours and Hinge is blowing up

i can't stomach the disgust 

awakening

what if the issue was just

well, not so simple, but as simple as

holding each other's hands and trusting each other to really see, and hear, really listen

instead of with bated breath hoping we would guess what the other really meant, or which thing we really referred to?

i think i understand what you mean about

your feelings, when i thought i had addressed

your

feelings

and clearly

if this is what i'm seeing correctly

now that i'm not so scared, now that the flashbacks are calming down

now

that

i wonder if your gaslighting really was just fear, since i was too afraid to touch it and see you explode and burn me so i could never get over it and back to alive

then i see how unnecessarily we blew to smithereens

but your impatience with me was also part of the gaslighting--

--because gaslighting means

refusal to communicate and allow two people to meet

i'd roller skate over to your part of the equation and hug you

into eternity

prestidigitation

 that's you.

that was me. what if i can't write without you by my side

jazzing up Japanese prawns with your own spice

i am not saying yes to any of them, just crying at you telling me i'd hurt myself and me wanting to give you what you want because that seems to be what you want

to laugh at me far, far away

dashed

to pieces

oh, i just can't bear it

so i'm doing whatever it takes to get banned and the responses

who knew i'd cry this hard

cédric, asking if you'd ever known the real me

i would die a thousand deaths to prove to you

i really was that productive, busy--oh, i would even have seen if i could get my transcript from EKU from before my son was born

i'd have done whatever it took to prove that i'm a hard worker

if that's what you meant--

--oh, my God, i did everything, i went to college and everything

and was torn away from it--

so why did you choose a self for me that's thirty years old? twenty-eight...

oh, cédric, did you suspect i was the kind who would crumple and die if you guided me to it?

is that why you guided me there, and told me the things to do?

i never thought that would be you, shoving my face into the sand and making me eat it

i thought you were the one who wanted to sit next to me while i stoked my fire with my platinum words

not laugh at me while i look at all

the things

you told me i must be

when all we ever did was smile together

control

 you need it in everything

that's part of the gaslighting

oh, what hurt you caused a freezing

and, oh, no, i prefer to be frozen so i don't remember the list

control is at the top

but dreaming you're not that

i can't sleep

my body

sleep

 contains you

and unlike resin cruz

you're not stabbing me dozens of times

or shooting me until i'm riddled with holes

and the blood so slick smears the floor...

so i can't go back

but the nights number what curls like infinity before me

and i wonder if i am glad i am dying sooner

than when i was 19 and being raped nearly every day

i changed my profile picture thinking it would be so nice to show you just me

not my high school graduation photo with the man who abused me in every single way possible for four years

but i guess it alarmed

anger

to dream of you--

--i have only dreamed of these real men:

dad (coming to beat and rape me and being eaten alive by crabs and lobsters bursting from their tanks in a basement aquarium while my deaf classmates and i were on a field trip)

clint forgiving me for being his rape victim

dad (shooting me to death for telling him i couldn't be molested anymore, and then one month later--to the day--going about my business as he hanged himself in his basement to give me an incest-free Valentine's Day funeral at which to speak)

david (resin cruz: shooting me to death, or stabbing me to death, for loving him and trying not to have been raped by him, or having had my arm nearly broken for $160 from the ATM, or 

slapped in the mouth for loving him)

jeff (the kids' dad, shooting me to death or stabbing me to death for being so strong i left him as many times as it took...ally made me calculate it to be struck in the face with the bare facts, and i was raped at least 560 times by jeff...556 of these times between october of 2014 and february of 2015. yes, a minimum of two times a day, usually four to seven, for not wanting my legs to open for him, and for asking where he'd pawned my gold jewelry)

and now you. and it's just loving silence

but that's not even the truth

you wish you'd never met me

terror

 is typing things like

*saying i'm emotional is gaslighting

oh, there are so many examples and i said but it was just the one, just the one

ignoring he said that in six months i could move toward him

every time i asked...

--when i could have copied and pasted what you'd typed and kept spamming you with it

posting it fifty times a minute

i could've taken out an ad in a cork newspaper

i could've written a play about it and put on a caper--

...but that's not just a tiny example, you see--

--it was designed to make me fall apart so you could desecrate

but why would you destroy me just to piss all over my besotted face?

"because he's a man " resounding

from all

the 

women

with whom i used to swing in solidarity 

and now just don't make any sense to me

(i am actually...i am a logical person, and i always still love...

...you caressed me in so many ways, helped me steady myself, showed me that a man can see...

...but apparently you lack empathy)

facts and logic and coping

aren't compassion, but i thought

you were compassion and love and

anyway, i am living in terror

for having to name it all. there is more than i thought--but you'd never forgive me, you will travel farther and farther away

when all i want is to still your pain.

there's more, and it goes back to almost the very beginning...extinguishing my flame

denying my core

but what was the whole friendship even for...

feelings

 you were wrong!

i listened. you said you couldn't be with me if we weren't in the same area.

you said you couldn't move to america as a Black man 

for fear of everything

and i understood so completely i steadied my heart

you said i wasn't near you

that you'd need to be physically near someone to risk your heart

and you asked me to move closer toward you once my six-month tenure in poland was up...

...which you said, you

not me

not i

your beautiful words...

was a long time, a long wait

but worth every minute so i could move toward you

--oh, how could you do what you've done

...even my baby girl cries and clings to me...

--my son begs me to stop because it hurts his ears--

--my daughter just nods her head sagely and pats my arm--

"you don't understand," and

i was raped in june; two nights later i thought i'd met someone to love, and i'm not even close to missing him. i don't want him tying me up

and my daughter didn't even blink at those tears, or the ones over dee.

these scare her, so what does she hear?

heartbreak--all i want is for you to shine--

what else is love?

tg: you've gaslit me. 

(cédrìc, the reason i never asked for your photo

is that i'm in love

and you fill me so delightfully 

but i don't feel that way 

i feel like i have to try, you're so delighted

but i'm in love, and i tried, i tried

but i got raped instead--

--and his belly was about a foot overhung

and he's my height, and a drunk

oh, i tried with dee, i was so sure

dee would be it but i don't stay quiet

about sexual assaults--

i vomit and vomit everywhere i drive

i almost pass out in parking lots 

in my own bed 

since dee made me vomit pushing on my head

i guess you could call him DJ BJ...

...oh, he scared me, cédrìc

in a way only musclebound chris has 

so i know

that no matter how long you and i tried

my love for musclebound chris endures

it's nourishing 

he holds me at night inside my heart

and he says it's never going to happen again

he pulls my hair back when i vomit 

and he says the flashbacks don't have to ruin what we have in my memory and my need

oh, but the real musclebound chris

leaves me limping 

said i was never molested as a child

never--raped--even on first dates--

and he wears knives on my downtrodden snake, on my heart

so, cédrìc, my love

understand: you are not my love like that 

you know me, you flow me, we flow poetry)

pretended you never said it. refused to acknowledge that you offered love

and in all my adult years

the only soulmate i ever felt

flutters from each word you write.

your poetry writ large on the lite-brite of the universe....

i will eternally hang my head in shame 

i am all disgust, i am the dictionary's saddest word

i should be shot up and riddled with holes

for wanting what you offered

(i woke up from you again--i am being attacked as i sleep)

moon

 you have possibly had trauma like mine 

i can't say

but i'll be crass anyway and say, hey...

i don't think you know what it's like to see an iron bar an inch from your eyes

because a rapist was seething that you screamed in such devastated pain

that he punished you and then within an inch your life was saved

so: oh, cédric--

for a few months i was...i was more than frozen, i was screaming to keep the memories at bay...

...screaming in bed, night and day

and hulu was out then. it was 2009

and one of the telltale heartbeats

that you have been such a ring around my heart

was that after dee sexually assaulted me

i didn't even care about drowning...oh, isn't that a dream!...into hulu

i just wanted to get to work being someone you'd be proud of. someone i had been proud of before

and another thing tg laid out for me was the frame: maybe you don't see

or care

that i've devoted myself to staying at home until my babies are old enough to handle me being a college girl--that you may view that

as drowning

not as pandemic living, or the impossibility of getting daycare for job interviews...

...or of devoting myself to an infant who came home after he weighed a whopping four pounds, ensuring that he didn't die--

--that that is a valid way to live a life...

...that it isn't drowning the way you might think

but listen: being terrified after a cop rapes ya

the one in june, the one you reached out to me over, and trotted over to me to comfort me about--

and tells you you're going to prison for raping him

after gloating: i'm a former gangbanger

will make you inject as much prime video as you can 

but that fear of being

evanescenced into...me

*   *   *

my dream! oh, my dream! i'm bawling

because of this i'm forbidden from collaborating on poetry 

but i've been good!

i haven't even looked at your DeviantArt

i love you so much i don't wanna do you wrong--you did me dirty...

oh!

well. in 2021 i was engaged.

to a Black man, oh, i don't know if there's something wrong with me...most of all, i feel they don't rape me too often...

because when he dislocated my hip with his weight

i screamed and asked him to get off because he'd dislocated my hip

so he dislocated the other 

and very nearly killed me black&blue

when i said the engagement was broken...

...david left me broken for a year...

but you might leave me broken for a lifetime--

--in the nicest way

(love, love, bleeding to know love)

cruz

october 22, 2010: i was writing a poem. remember, cédric, New York has an Itch? it was maybe 10:30. it was maybe even 9:30, around now.

i was on my lovely, expensive olive couch of crushed velvet. 

resin cruz used his key for the first time.

he had disappeared. the shopkeepers, the deli owners, the bodega workers, the laundromat people...they all told me he'd gotten his ex pregnant. it tracks with breakup sex. so he'd had to leave new york to get a social security number, get a better job...

...and they all told me he was a lowlife and that i was intelligent, well dressed, clearly had money, and far too good for him.

anyway. this literally has nothing on what he did to me in april of 2012, but. i just reread my posts over there because i was killed in 2012 (yes, literally) directly because of him. and. wow. 

so he turned his key. in my lock. 

he'd been living under the table at his parents' with mice and cockroaches in fort greene. 

he refused to use the key and have a home. i told him we could scale back: not be boyfriend and girlfriend, but friends or FWB, and i'd move my jewelry studio into the living room so he could have my second bedroom.

he started hitting me for loving him.

so he was really addicted to me, my body, the sex. i'd thought he was screwing around but it wasn't that. his mom was forcing him to get back together with pregnant priscilla because i'm deaf. she hated me for being deaf from the very start. his stepfather loved me. i got to drink beer and watch football games.

she said being with a deaf woman (to my face) was socially unacceptable, especially for the son of one of mayor bloomberg's pet projects.

so

he came

in and my heart stopped at the rectangle of light 

and the black silhouette

my MacBook in my lap and a poem bleeding purple 

so i closed it and set it onto the floor

and david ushered himself in and changed my life forevermore:

he'd been so lovely, reading my rape autobiography

marveling at the pictures and the melody of how my broken bird sings

but that night, while priscilla dandled their toothy baby on her knee

he was slipping and sliding subway cars closer and closer (get it?) to me

...and when he got to me his eyes glowed by the light of the moon 

and he whispered, i'm sure it was a whisper: "i can't wait to find out if raping you feels even better

than making love to you,"

and the fight that ensued

the fury in my eyes, the snarl of my lip

the struggle, the fists

only made his eyes 

well, more and more besotted. 

like mine when i think of your poetry--

--see the difference? 

*   *   *

i do not, i do not want to think of those eyes that night--

--they were orbs of pure delight

oh:

 and you set me up. is what it is:

you set me up by telling me i would hurt myself

and, oh, the pain of looking at an old man while he violates me would be delicious

i would think of you the way the night craves the dawn

but it isn't who i am--

--he showed me how you laid out the framework--

--that what i saw as empathy was you laying down each stepping stone so i became

a perfect victim--

but, no, you're not a narcissist, i can't see it...

...oh, because...

your brain is just so lovely

it must house an IQ so heady

and narcissists are not

that

smart.

what have you suffered? i'd change it all but

oh! the poetry 

locks

i keep getting out the shears. i told you i don't like when men pull women's hair. that i never wanted them pulling mine. so i usually had fauxhawks in NYC.

but going shorn was new. i did it in 2016 when jeff strangled me for the first time. in october.

he came home and sobbed.

cried for days.

but he'd strangled me when i said i had to go to the cops and report him because by then

he'd stolen at least

$40,000 just in cash.

i pretended then

half-believed

whichever is really true

because

the thing about narcissists is that they look like the rest of us most of the time 

that that meant he loved me.

but what he must have loved

was pulling my hair.

you'd never believe the roars that rise and burst

out of me

when my hair is pulled. the fights i start--

--but what locks never break

are the locks i wrap you up in.

i hope they never break

or i'll have to slump to the cobblestones of Hell

wrong

 you said your bestie knows she...was it does wrong? what was your wording?...

that she's a single mom with a child. or was it another friend? anyway. 

i had to correct you. and you said you'd misspoken. i thought that was strange and filed that away; you said she was wrong. i explained that she wasn't the one committing the wrong. you agreed and said that she chose wrong, is that what you then said?...

i know your English still isn't perfect despite living in Ireland for a decade, but you know the word wrong. you know what it means. 

that was one early red flag, only i didn't see it as a red flag. blaming a woman for being abused. blaming a woman for being with an abuser.

and then saying you didn't use the word wrong right. 

gut

 oh, gut, be kind.

see, not only did you 

i'm so embarrassed i can't bear to remember

it was right here, at the tip of my frontal cortex

the tip of my tongue

the tip of my clitoris

the tip of my phalanges 

all ready to type up

but i can't bear it...

...and all i did was say yes.

i want a photograph--

disbelief

i'm looking at it.

i see it.

it's deliberate; you are deliberate. i loved that about you.

but--are you deliberately

abusive?

it's all so calculated. but you were good!

you were so good.

how could you be so calculated in...

...is it a root of evil, or--

--no. you've been so wronged you can't relax

isn't that it?...

gaslit

i'm sagging. my whole future is collapsing. all this camaraderie, all this developing friendship--

--my therapist reminded me: all my gaslighters did this. all of them. they gain their victims' confidence, they gather information, they are also looking for what they believe is love.

no one is exactly the same, right, cédric?

but i feel so devastated. i can't become a psychiatrist now. not if i'm so dedicated to the image of you i've had.

i got a personal protection order against joe. he's in prison for slitting someone's throat. the same man who helped me get the PPO against joe was so thrilled he raped me that same week because, as he said, "i have to jumpstart our sexual relationship. i've been waiting long enough." he's the father of my children.

jeff's florida mugshot and two of dee's hinge profile pictures--i didn't see the resemblance until i was sitting on the floor looking up at him after the second blowjob. 

so i left jeff as many times as it took. yes, i worked harder at it once i realized he was racist, and all our conversations about his racism went right back to "My friends are okay with me saying the -a word, and the other version is okay in jokes." i worked SO HARD to get the hell away permanently. but i did do it because he abused me. so that's still OK for a future psychiatrist. 

dee, you were so lovely and so close to me, i could feel so protected, and dee was saying that i live in trauma because i was processing his...was it rape? sodomy? molestation?...of me and the more he insinuated and asked whether it was my issue the more i fell apart. but not in my whole life. because you were there. in my life. being cédric. so i was processing his abuse of me and he said it was me existing in trauma. it was gaslighting.

you...no, you can't be a narcissist. no, i don't believe it for a second. you gaslit me. i know. but my therapist says you were sophisticated about it. more elusive. the more i tell him the more he knows you collected data and then used tactics on me that dee never could have.

now i can't even be what i want to be because i can't unsee what i want to see, and even with musclebound chris last year i shut it down. fast. i gave myself time limits.

but i am limping

unlaced

and i want your hand on my heart saying

it isn't true

but i see the gas

i smell

the flames

protection

i will protect you from it

i protect my loved abusers from it

but after dee gaslit me for hours and hours on end

i knew i had a good, solid man in you

and i let go of protecting him.

but you, how? how do i protect myself and how do i keep you 

you gaslit me but you're not a narcissist

or...

...i'm falling...

...are you?

but HOW

denial

 you gaslit me.

i've known it since you did it.

i'm falling

i'm falling

i'm falling

because i can't match it with the rest of you.

so i know. your trauma made you do it. it has to be your trauma. but why would you gaslight

abusers gaslight!

you're not an abuser! what happened to you to make you gaslight me?

you very clearly wrote that living in poland for six months was a long time but to move toward you afterward.

how am i supposed to trust you to recover our conversation? you'll just find a way to remove that part.

and then i'll be dying

falling

dying

falling

dying

delight

 was thinking i had a place to learn about the different ways i could feel about a man and categorize it all without losing you.

i thought i could just figure out what it meant to feel things and you would still be there.

love

 i just really love my best friends. i'd do anything for them. even cradle you gently and tenderly knowing it's going to break because you can't see that i just see.