Fresh From His Touch

Amongst all of us he stands,

Amongst all of us he lives,

Like all of us he smiles,

Every day,

In peace.

For the emotion of shame,

The emotion of guilt,

They don’t seem to exist in him.

Everywhere I go,

His breath,

His voice,

His aura,

Linger in the air around me; there is no escape.

So I breathe it in, for I need to live.

I breathe in the air which is

Tainted with toxicity.

Because I am asked to live,

In a place like this.

I am asked to take in, all he gives.

Take in, the scent he leaves.

I am asked to forgive him,

I am asked to forget it,

I am asked to let him;

Let him look at me the way he wants to,

Let him touch me the way he wants to,

Let him feel my body the way he wants to.

And nothing feels more terrifying than this.

Nothing feels more terrifying than screaming,

When there is no one to hear you.

Nothing feels more terrifying than looking into his eyes,

And seeing lust dripping from them as tears drip from mine.

Nothing feels more terrifying than screaming into your ear; crying for help,

As you place your hand on my mouth, for you want to quell my voice.

And you walk away.

But even if he were to whisper, you’d step closer to listen.

Where were you when I needed you to listen?

I do not understand,

How he does all the wrong deeds

In a crowd,

And it cheers as if my body is a medal he has won.

But the moment I raise my voice;

It being the very right thing

The crowd leaves.

As though I never ran the race,

As if my neck should have scars from his fingernails,

And not the medal he snatched away.

The medal I have earned.

As if all these years of running; of growth,

Were nothing at all.

And here I lay, breathless.

I ran the race,

But he stands with pride,

And the crowd claps for him.

Only him.

He, alone is not the only felon,

But all those who stand as a wall ahead of him—

All of you, are him.

Your hands are the filthy hands which lay upon me,

Your eyes are the lascivious eyes that devoured the sight of me,

Your grin is the malefic grin of pride sneering at me.

He is in you.

So when he is out there, set free to soar high above me,

As he blocks the sunlight,

Leaving me to the shadows;

With a broken wing and my feet fettered to the ground,

Unfledged, for he plucked out all the feathers.

I dream of the sky,

Of a sky I will fly in some day,

A sky of only miles of blue,

And seldom a tinge of grey.

And I can only dream,

As he flutters his wings and looks down at me with a sneer,

All I ask is,

For you to

Set me free.

All of you, those who shield him,

This wall, is to be replaced with the bars of a prison.

And empty prisons call for men like him,

But his hands, they’re set free.

For the hand cuffs lay far,

From his filthy hands —

Untethered.

Unleashed.

Unchained.

Left out in the open.

Left out to lay themselves on another body.

I want to know how it feels to be free, again.

Free of the dried skin that still holds his scars,

Free of the gunfire in my heart at the slightest of touch,

Free of the prison that my mind spends every day in,

Scribbling tally marks and poetry on the walls of this prison, only yearning for escape.

Set me free.

I wonder, which words you would pick

And how would you bedeck your tongue with these,

And how would you let them stumble from the edge your tongue?

I wonder how you would gather the courage,

To justify his doings?

I wonder which arrangement of words would ever help you,

For I have arranged mine pretty well,

They’re stacked one after the other,

Each one piercing into your skin.

Only for the end of the poem,

To leave you wounded.