My midnight meditations bring me back,
front and centre,
To a lifelong impulse for brute force and tribulation,
What the mind witnesses in childhood,
The heart covets amidst a contaminated
coming-of-age.
I sprung forward, a languishing jack-in-the-box,
Arms wide open,
beckoning to the vexed troglodytes,
Promising a warm home, in me,
Despite swallowing the venom in their discharge.
Go away, they said:
A knife, blade propelling,
Slices the empty plastic bottle just a few inches in front of me.
Imagine, this was my only shield.
But my guts still spilled out in a hidden cavity called sorrow.
Or maybe it was titillation?
We don't want you, they said:
A head butt, sharp, stinging,
Leaving a violaceous stain
On tormented brow,
Made not from prostrating in prayer,
Plainly from a direct hit by the beloved tempest
An inconvenient discolouration,
I rearranged my hair.
Nobody noticed.
Your face is repugnant, they said:
My head dizzy after being tossed from the seat.
Huddling at their feet, I saw the tight stretch of skin on choleric knucks,
They came down, down, down,
A furious pounding,
A tantrum, kicking my huddled mass,
Exhaustion disrupted the battering,
Weak men tire quickly.
We don't need your consent, they said:
Because they were doing me a favour
Phallic protrusions breached tender portals of an unsuspecting body,
Igniting no pleasure, only exquisite injury,
That I would not call by its prescribed name.
Shush, they said:
Hands now encircling my nape, compressing, squeezing
Strangling the voice they cursed
Soliciting my annihilation, but breath lingered,
So, mighty walloping of the belly supervened,
Until sleep turned rage to rest.
I wept because I was still alive.
You see, I'd magically pop back up with arms opened wide,
Anguished smile in red maquillage, putting on the pretty
But they always saw past the simulated femme
Concealer, a failed camouflage
Woman, smile, they said.
But the creases exposed the mutant underneath.
This petrified their ego, but no harm in profiteering
From infatuations I diagnosed as love
They were men after all, anticipating their big break
Until then, they sought the prerequisites that would help pay their way,
By plundering their tenacious jack-in-the-box,
Limerence was free currency,
And biting the hand that fed them had no consequence.
