If you’re going to tell me that everyone has the ability to heal,
that everyone has the ability to recover,
then I’m going to ask why I am still covered

in so much shame I rarely go a day without butchering
my own name? Why I can still take a punch
better than I can take a compliment?
Why I teeter so constantly between flight and fight
it’s like I’m trying to beat the daylight
out of my own fucking sky,
like my body will never stop fighting him off.

Do you understand how certain I am
that I could have torn my nails into his wrist
pulled out his pulse
deactivating a bomb?

I could have called that peace.
I could have called that not checking my window
a hundred fucking times every single night
before I fall asleep.

What if I don’t want the monster
to stop being a monster?

What if that’s the only anchor I have left?
What if my sanity depends on being able to point
at the bad thing and say, That is the bad thing.

Haven’t I already lost enough time
losing track of who the enemy is?
I’ve spent half of my life not knowing the difference

between killing myself and fighting back.

What if I don’t want healing
as much as I want justice?
What if I don’t care if justice
looks exactly like revenge?
Do you think I don’t know that I can’t
want revenge without strapping the bomb
to my own chest?

That’s how the dominoes of trauma fall.
You become just another thing about to detonate.

And whatever part of me that could believe in healing
was the part he stole.

So go ask him for my forgiveness. Go ask him.