she writes
when it hurts
i dont
i
sit silent
still atremble
caught short-sheeted
in the lies of her embrace
that day i said
"you never loved me bitch"
i learned the meaning of blunt teeth
on thigh
fists in hair
her deafness to my cries
like a housewife's shrieks
forgotten
she beat me
she loved me
she beat me
her words flowed staccato
creative uninterrupted
strawberry blonde barbs that
flourished like the red roses
she'd bring me
often
my pain
purged colorless like
shadows of steel
passed forgotten like
unwritten impulse
that memory
i carry strapped to my hip
a sidearm continually loaded and fired
at the wrong times
familiar as everyone's Valhalla
yet always leading me back
to the same place
but when she broke that mirror
tore books or spat words
and the air raged electric
from her face
my stone face met cement
and i never saw a bruise
never heard the child within crying
to feel the defiant scratch
of pen on paper
against denial
yet she writes
when it hurts
when she smacks words against fact
people listen
mine breed silence
aborted pre-poems strangled
like my trust in her caress
like an unwritten impulse
held within
© 1987 Julie Murphy
Published inOff Our Backs, February 1987.
Back to Julie's published writing