Despair

Trigger warning: This post contains an extensive discussion of rape and an extensive discussion of despair/depression.

Bite your hand to keep back the scream that will never come,
No one heard it the first time anyway,
Or if they did, they never rescued you,
And never told you.
So it doesn’t matter now—
Damage done.
But you can still hear that scream in your ears,
Your own scream,
Leaving you stuck on the outside of you.
Bloody fists banging on bullet proof walls:
Please just let me back in—
It wasn’t my fault—
Forgive me, self, for his sin.
When does memory give way to peace?
Show me the juncture where you will find mercy for yourself;
Show me the end.
Tell me maybe-some-day-one-day,
You will be
Okay,
Self.
There is a door beyond all this, and
You can walk through it,
On your own two feet,
And you do not have to take him with you.
His crime is not your death sentence.
You did not stop that day.