How to Outlive the Violence

The fire that burns in your belly

was not lit by your own making.

Your abuser put it there,

coal, iron and searing heat.

*

Do not try to douse it.

Do not try to tend it gently.

Feed it what it needs, your rage,

clean and righteous as a blade.

*

The child you were still lives

in the garden of your bones.

They are waiting. They have always been waiting.

Go to that person. Kneel if you must.

Tell them I have come back.

I will not leave again.

*

Your mother's bruises were purple flowers

that never bloomed into justice.

Your sister's silence was a bird

with clipped wings. You cannot

make them whole. You can only

tend to your own small plot of earth,

plant what you choose,

let it grow wild or ordered.

*

There is innocence in you too,

pale but trembling. It knows

the predator. It has tasted its venom.

But the innocent does not belong to the beast.

It belongs to the morning,

to the grass, to the running.

*

When the shaking comes,

when the old fear rises like flood water,

remember you are not the house

your abuser burned. You are the one

who walked out of the ashes,

who learned to build with strength.

*

Forgiveness is not a virtue

you owe to anyone. If it comes,

let it come like rain,

when the season is right.

If it does not, let that be right too.

*

There are two paths before you.

One paved with their voices,

their excuses, their need for you

to make it smaller than it was.

One paved with your own knowing.

*

Take the second.

Walk until your legs remember

they were made for this.

*

You will know you are free

when you speak of it

and your voice does not tremble,

when you sleep and do not wake

to the sound of their footsteps,

when you understand at last

what was done to you was evil,

but you are not evil.

You never were.

*

The furnace and the innocent

will dwell together

in the kingdom of your body.

*

This is the prophecy.

This is the work.

This is how you are made new.

Author’s Note:

This poem is personal. I was abused by my father's hands from the time I was very young until I was thirteen years old. That experience shaped how I moved through the world for a long time. I’m sharing this so readers understand where the poem comes from. It isn’t meant to describe everything that happened. It’s about what it took to survive and what it has taken to heal.

I am doing better now many, many years later I still have dreams of the abuse, but I don't let it control me like it once did. That’s because my mother stepped in, asked for help, and got me out. She protected me and helped pull me from the ashes when I couldn’t do it myself.

I offer this poem to anyone who has lived through any type of abuse and is still carrying it on their shoulders. What happened was wrong. Living through it was not.