Red.

A poem meant to be read out loud. Maybe someday.

When I was eight, they were yelling in the kitchen

I crept from my room to hear

glass shattering, wine splattering. 

to hear my mother's fear

plastering her to the wall and

I ran back down the hall

dove into my bed 

buried my young head and

never spoke of it at all. 

Just a year later,

I started fifth grade.

Glass shattering. 

Blood spattering, sprung from

the glass my father broke

to intimidate my mother

my blood rushed free

and the Northern Lights exploded in my eyes

as my life dripped down my arms. 

Pencil sharpeners left empty

the very same way I felt 

when I snuck out to the truck 

to steal a cigarette

cold flick of the lighter

the embers burning brighter

touched to my skin. 

the same skin boys wanted to touch

ugly welts on my new breasts

exposed. 

a b-cup grade six

baby hooker with a boyfriend

cuts on my wrists

only the shortest skirts on my hips

eleven years old 

with his seventeen year old hands on my tits

I never asked for his money

never wanted his love. 

A boy in my grade gave me love

What he gave me was the ability

to know

A Man's World. 

I never asked him to touch me

Never knew his name. 

He took what he wanted

and burned into me my shame. 

I trembled every night

Took the blood 

Wrote my name

Ripped into my skin

Baby girl they'd call

As I'd run down the street

dive into my home

hide under my sheets. 

thirteen years old

I like girls. 

My first kiss was a her

At two am in the Michigan winter

The very year next 

I entered the concrete jungle

I had a few exes

Mistakes

Problems. 

I didn't eat then

Didn't socialize

Started dating in the grade above 

Let him touch my skin

Find the welts

See my hatred. 

He slept with a best friend

then said I ripped his heart out 

I told him he didn't have one. 

Said f**k off

and laid down for his sister. 

Two months 

was all it took. 

she fell in love

I couldn't face her. 

Went away for a month. 

Met beautiful boys in the Dominican Republic. 
They braided my hair with flowers and I was gorgeous

pale and exotic. 

They loved me so much my hatred disappeared. 

When I came back I started to cut my legs.

I couldn't command beauty.

Only hate.  

The blood dripped from my skin

I shredded my soul

found the heart I said I didn't have and gave it away to a boy with a princess. 

he lost his queen and found me 

all he could do was touch my skin

trace my scars 

and bite my neck. the end of freshman year

and the last end of my life. 

He came back to me 

appeared in my driveway

brown eyes

learned to love my voice

he said I was beautiful

and we kissed under the fireworks that celebrate our nation 

a year point five later

he's angry again

and I can't touch him anymore 

he's so far away. 

and I begin to cut my skin. 

sixteen years old. 

you haven't done anything

is what he swears. 

then why, why can't I love you

I cry silently in my room

cut my hair short

the nation in ruins

my heart long gone

his problems he says

a year and a half into forever

and he still doesn't know I love him

no matter how many times I say it. 

he can't hear me. 

headphones up too loud. 

i can't connect. 

i'm paper and ink 

and they're all digital.

sixteen years old

and I can still feel a foreign hand

curled evilly around my baby hooker tits

the hand I'd thought was seventeen 

but now I see a twenty seven year old face

sexual predator 

and I ask my lover to beat me and bite me

to tell the world I'm his

so nobody else can assault me

and they still do. 

eight

nine

ten

and suddenly I'm sixteen and bloody all over again.

battered and used. 

a wasteland. 

running red. 

yearning for nothing. 

except a text

from the one who says he loves me.