Would you still love me?

Trigger warning for being particularly more triggering than ordinary

 

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I fucked my father.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

when other little girls wanted to be princesses

and mothers

I wanted to doctor infants

so I could run my hands across their body

and shove things inside of them.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I knew how to get off on rape fantasies

before I knew how to read.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I read every last scripture in the Bible about sex

the moment I did know how to read.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I remember the greasy way his head felt

when I tried pushing it from between my legs

but he had hold of me.

(I stopped resisting too easily.)

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I fucked my brother.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I’d play his games just for the attention

just to deflect his rage.

( felt up    punched; choose one)

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I once took a long beaded necklace

and hit him against his bare back

hard enough to cause welts,

and felt no remorse.

I dug my fingernails into his arm

until it drew blood

on one of the countless nights

he’d grabbed my wrist

and twisted my arm around.

Will  you still love me if I tell you that

the day he shattered the window with his fist

I was taunting him from the other side

and this is me, holding weapons in my mouth

and you can’t blame anyone for fighting back.

(I still have nightmares about empty windows and broken glass.)

Will you still love me if I tell you

if I had kept silent about things my father had done

my other brother would have never thought about molesting me.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

my mother has a story of “little boy curiosity”

that makes me dizzingly sick

(I was born a toy for curious little boys)

and every time I’ve heard that small laugh of hers

I think about taking fingernails to her unblemished skin

and clawing until every inch is stained red.

(Monster demons run through my veins

over silly little things.)

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I wish they’d killed me; taken off fistfuls

of my flesh, carved into my bones until I was nothing.

It would have been kinder.

Would you still love me if I tell you that

I feel like I am splitting from the seams

trying to contain all the fragments of myself

inside this ill-fitting body

and sometimes I wish for the knife

that could cut me free.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I recuperate from showers

I talk myself through going to the bathroom,

that I’m writing this now because

I’m too afraid to go to sleep.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I had to teach myself how to feel

and even now, I’m afraid, that none of this is real.

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I’ve thought about hurting everyone I “love”

taking your pain and twisting it through your gut

until you are an empty window and broken glass

and there are voices in my head I fight

every day to be “good.”

(A monster by another name,

but I’m no different from them)

Will you still love me if I tell you that

I’m a construct of words and empty phrases

and a husk of a body I can’t fill enough

with pieces of self that are more likely lies than truth.

(I wouldn’t know how to be alive if I tried)

Would you still love me if I told you that

at the end of the day

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know

what I am

my mouth is full of burrs and snarls

my words trip over.

Can you still love me,

if I tell you that?

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