Guide to your first pap smear

Guide to your first pap smear from a victim of sexual abuse:

• When you ask them why you will need this, they will tell you it is because all women are supposed to get this once they turn 18. But this will not be comforting.
• When you fill out the questionnaire, and you get to question 18, you will hover over the "yes" box that asks you if you have ever been a victim of sexual abuse as if checking "no" could change the past, as if checking "no" could stop the questions from being asked.
• When you go into the bathroom, as instructed, your clothes will cling to your skin as if trying to protect you from being violated again.
• The sanitary gown will feel like paper in the wind over your lead feet and shaking body.
• When you ask them, again, why you will need this, even if you're not sexually active, they will tell you it is because all women are supposed to get this once they turn 18. But this will not be comforting.

Because not every woman knows this.
Not every woman is assured by this.
Not every woman has been molested.
Not every woman has been raped.
Not every woman blends into bed sheets and screams silently
when her lover touches her in all the places
that have long been broken
tainted
taken
forgotten
Not every woman trembles because she is embarrassed
Some women
tremble
to shake the deeply embedded fear
branded within them
from iron castes
made to resemble their rapist's hands
So,

• When they tell you to lay down and scoot closer, it will remind you of the day after--the shower that couldn't get you clean, the hours staring back at empty eyes in the mirror, the bruises, the bones broken, the rape kit, the lesions, the heaviness, the emptiness, the loneliness. 
• When they show you the tool they will insert into you, they will say it is small and that it will not hurt but by this time, you aren't listening. Instead, the tool will be an arrow, piercing into a dark and rotten secret.
• The only difference is that this time they won't cover your mouth, they won't hold you down, they won't tickle your knees or grope your thighs, they'll have gloves to cover the fingerprints, you won't bleed this time.

but you'll be silent
and it will still feel the same.

And your best friend will laugh
thinking you're crying from embarassment
and you'll cry over your lover's shoulder
only once
then you'll fill the born again emptiness
with their smiles and kisses
because you won't want your emptiness
to take over their whole, take over their warmth
and your best friend will laugh
and your mother will never know
and you won't tell anyone ever again
no more no
no more.

New video of me performing "Rust Collector" at my friend Nick Macedo's Without Flinching Show.
Check it out here!
http://vimeo.com/channels/nickmacedo#31632023

drink to the wise

drank to the wise
a cup full of glass
all i have is all i have
broken glass
reflecting myself
through everything new
and under you
i have won
where i have lost
and i lose my mind
sometimes too much
i don't think
i come around often enough
for you to speak to
these parts of me
and i don't mind
being alone
with my own
thoughts.

butterfly stones

Wanted to tell you

That day when

The sky was a mess of emptiness

Vast blue glass

A sky like that

Makes everything seem so far away

And still.

Like existence

Never really happens.

It just is.

I wish I would have swallowed your silence 

before you lost your words

I wish I would have said something sooner

Or later

Depending

On how heavy my hands were

From holding my head up all day.

It's easy floating in a timeless sky.

Harder to walk back down to the circumstance of

someone else

adjust to

someone else's perception

someone else's conception

of what happened

and what will be

wanted to tell you

I had butterflies once that fluttered in my belly

Reminded me that when time makes you

Don't

You make it

And they lived first when

We talked about paradoxes and language

But the sky is filling

With seas of bees and storms in the city

the walk back into my own arms was long

and now these butterflies

feel like stones

I never wanted to be anything

In this empty sky

Not in your mind, not in mine

And when it broke

I'm not sure what fell

In this blue glass bottle

I've spat my butterflies out the bin

It's a long walk back down to your arms

When the heart is heavy and the skin is thin.

On most days that happen like somedays

I am afraid

That one day

You will dissolve

Into my bloodstream

And I will bleed

The echoing existence

Of your memory

Because circumstance won't allow me to grieve properly

Because time will tell me to let go

And because the world will convince me

That your presence never happened

I am afraid

Of the absence of you

An invisible outline

Of something beautiful

I have yet to trace completely

With my fingertips

Like sun shadows on abandoned buildings

Flickering temporary

I'm afraid

To see you leaving

Or being a reason you stay
I love you too soon but

I do not love you now
I have known you before but

I do not know you yet

Nor do I know if I want to

But all the same

I am afraid

That if I try to hold all of you in my arms

You will slip away and break

So I touch you sparingly

Wanting to preserve

The dips of your dimples

The secrets I leave

Behind your neck

In the creases of your forehead

Tangles in your hair

I am afraid

Of the ocean

Of whales

Of kindness

Of possibility

Of you

Of me

I am afraid

That everything

Will fall on top of me

Before I get the chance

To fear

Loving you too much

Too little, just enough

Learning how to understand

Your eyes are not the same everyday

And neither is the sky

Neither am i

On most days

That happen like

Somedays

When we just don't know.

why we break

I do not always

Break silently

But I will break

Away from eyes

Away from arms

Chin up

Palms flat

On the floor

Behind doors

I'll hold closed

Safe inside my solitude

I am not proud

I am not weak

I bruise sunsets, bleed moon bellyaches.

I do not need your touch but

I am sorry

That I do not always know

When to stand and

When to fall

So sometimes I crumple

On the edges of sidewalks

On park benches

In my head

In your arms

Sometimes I break before I reach the floor
as if I'm dragged by

Weightless stones

Because it doesn't always feel heavy

At your worst

Sometimes it's just

Hurt.
No metaphors. No measurements.

Flawless and real.

And sometimes I need this

To remind myself that some things in the universe

Have no explanation

So when you find me

Walking glass giant

Shattering silently

On the ground
dragged by weightless stones

Put your arms down.

You cannot hold the wind.

and I will come back when

I will. My will

I break so that I won't be broken

I break so that I know when to let go

Of mountains that will not move

Trees that will not bend

And moons who stay silent

I break so that I can taste

What it is like to be again

On days when I forget

That not every question has an answer

Learn to remember

How to bend, how to break, how to live.

bodies

Bend, but don't break

Bodies, let's keep it that way.