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)