EMDR / Dean

Turns out, our bodies are computers And in EMDR, trauma was explained to me as an event that overwhelms our senses So much so, that our brains don't know how to store it Cannot file it away, so it hovers in our energy, stagnant A lost document So it went Southern California, five years old in gymnastics My instructor Dean asked me to stay after class Your head My lap Other way Take a nap No one will love you if you cry like that My skin scratched bright red, but he thought I'd comply But even at five, I had the same hurricane mind, electricity mouth, veins made of lightning A girl turned burning house He doused my young body in its first taste of trauma, crumpled my childhood and set it on fire A popsicle We'll make it better Was it banana Or cherry I can't fucking remember So clumsy A slide Fell off Small incident today No need to worry They looked Didn't see me More hide Less seek I think the light is leaving While the other kids sat rosy-cheeked and laughing, I sat in a corner spelling out sexual words in graham cracker lettering My soul screaming out sonnets with paper and pen I think the darkness cracked something in me open How could they not have noticed Those adults were in charge of children, the most vulnerable of our society So I built my vocabulary bigger than the list of names who failed me My brain an overheated battery trying to sort out what the flashbacks mean System overload My mind shut off in an effort to protect me Bits and pieces of the scene kept me up at night with all the flashing Four ceiling tiles Two beads of sweat Trauma's funny like that The details it lets you remember in the main event it forces you to forget I started screaming into pillows when I was alone and I didn't know why Overflowing my plate five times over at dinner Trying to fill up this crater inside I prayed the rosary Twice Was still drenched in a sin Even when the church opens its doors I refuse to walk in And I still don't know what makes a soul worth saving And after being cracked so many times it's no wonder we split open And when I write poems like these I don't know the right spots to put line breaks in Because everything at once feels like it's breaking Now I don't sing acapella Or cry in front of people When community knocks on my door I can't bring myself to answer it Ever since he poured his perversion in a cup and forced me to sip I don't know how to navigate relationships without manipulation I start to worry about the burn soon as sunlight hits my skin I remember being in the shower Meticulously shaving every ounce of human off of me One day refusing to be touched The next, hypersexuality On a scale of one to ten how disturbing is the memory Well, I would say that it's a ten For twenty-seven years I felt his hands on every inch of me Now I wake in the middle of the night Drenched in sweat My lovers have told me I fly up in bed in a panic In the morning my jaw aches I have to unclench my fists Now I'm torn between contemplating the weight of accusation and remembering that scar on your chin And how many more years have you taught at that gym How many more girls have you done this to Dean, is it five Is it ten After my first EMDR session some of the details still lacked But no one ever warned me the rage would be the first thing to come back I swear to God I could drown a whole ocean with it But how could I not With those screaming images arriving in flashes My hips not yet formed No baby teeth falling out yet I guess the way I balanced on a beam stirred up your sick sense of pleasure The younger the girl, the higher the chance she won't remember But this is what happens when you fuck with a writer My brain is precise I memorize six minute poems by the hour I've come back for you now Pure hellfire and literature And did you think you actually stood a chance against my power As if the ground did not rattle upon my arrival As if the oceans did not storm in anticipation of the hurricane I will rain down upon you As I rise up and crash down like the waves You left me outside in the rain Like a tattered sheet hung up to dry But just like Maya Angelou still I rise And my poems are coming for you I flew back to California Healing in hand Went straight to that gym And walked my ass in And I swear on everything holy You will never lay your hands on a child again Well Dean Now that this poem is quickly approaching part two I kindly request that you look me in the fucking eyes when I'm speaking to you 20 minutes 20 years ago Tell me What's the value And since no one ever told you When a person says no That in itself is a complete answer Zero explanation is required to follow But I guess that's what happens when you feed blood to a monster You would think it would change him But it just makes him grow stronger So if being beautiful means beaten and bruised I don't want it I will cut all my hair off I will scrub off this makeup We are conditioned in society based on faulty mathematics The church of her body set on fire by five different arsonists And the only thing that we question is how flammable her fabric is The clothes are not the problem Did you know that only 23% of sexual assaults go reported a year Has me thinking that the shame lies not in the women silenced But in the male privilege that silenced her When flames devour your skin There's no question if the burning is real So I vow to pull poems out of ashes Until there is nothing left for me to heal And I've made it a habit of lifting weights at the gym Vowing that if a man ever tried to hurt me in that way again He would walk away bleeding So please Someone just tell me what I'm needing to do to heal And I'll do it I will plant gardens in my throat Water them with the art that I wrote when they're dry Abracadabra What potion do I swallow to make my insides a calm sky How much my center sees sunlight if my ribcage is windowless And I've been thinking a lot lately about the human heart And it's capacity for forgiveness And I know in the future I will arrive at that place But to be honest that day hasn't come yet And I've always longed to speak with Rubik's cube lips But I'm all Ernest Hemingway Sprawling my blatancy on the table saying here All I have is this And I don't know why the tears come to me some days Maybe they are a part of me now But if the rumors are true If there's something in the water I wouldn't believe that rivers could drown Purity is found inside of a heart It does not live in a body And it has taken me years to understand that it is not something he ever could have stolen from me So I vow to be gentle with myself as my mind starts rewiring I'm ready to change the channel away from this endless loop of a memory Turns out I'm not American honey I did not grow up so Maybe innocence isn't real Maybe it never was but I have a spine made of iron and one hell of a soul And while I can't say what peace feels like I won't rest till I know So maybe that's why I find solace in poems These college-ruled pages are the closest I've ever had to a home Could a person still love me when these lines run like rivers and all that's left is my soul Maybe that's why I put off therapy all these years Could I still be interesting even when I am whole Turns out our bodies are computers And in EMDR it was explained to me that in order for our brains to process the trauma Our minds need to update our systems Toss out our old patterns Switch out our camera lens So I've begun to view this pain as an honor I rewrote my role in this story from victim to warrior And maybe God, whatever he, she, or it is Gives these experiences to the ones that are not only strong enough to handle it But have the ability to do something about it for all of us Isn't that love Isn't that love This morning I stood in the grocery store aisle Wondering if the bright sky blend of coffee might finally be the right fit for me Before a man passed He asked if anyone had reminded me I was