Child’s Voice

When I was a young girl,
I would wish I could be invisible,
to the eyes that looked for me
in the dark of night.
My bed was not my imaginary
princess castle;
It was the  birth place for evil.
A grown man’s twisted mind,
my small body he did find.
I was four.
He smelled like body odor and
red meat.
I was four.
He was bearded and ashamed,
and cried at my feet.
I was four.
But he still did what he did,
and I learned in those years
what men want women for.
That the objectification that
is warped in the minds
of creepy old men, is
as shameless as those who
don’t hide lustful wanting
in the thighs of the whores
who will not turn down money.
Maybe they started life like I did.
So the next time someone asks
me why I did all that crack.
All they need to know,
Is I didn’t want it back. The map
given to me that showed so clearly that
I was destined to be all fucked up.
That my travels would always lead me
to those that showed me love,
only to slam my face into a wall
before reminding me to shut up.
Breaking the pattern as laid out
broke me in more places than had I
just accepted my miserable fate.
But I would rather bleed from my eyes and
the gashes in my knees,
than walk the path of helplessness, and
blind fear, motivated by what may or may not happen.
I decide.
31 years later, I still speak with that
four year old hidden deep
inside the castle she deserved. The
fairy lights and the stars in the ceiling,
un blocked by the suffocating size of the man
who got in the way of the view.
I decide.
She decides.
A four year old with
her own tea set, and her own
laugh, that can be heard in my
grown up maze.
Freedom to wear her favorite dresses, and
hold hands with the monsters under the bed,
that reside in my head,
there, just for her.