Innocence lost
Maybe it was never there
Still counting the cost
U left me so bare,

Now my voice feels silent and mute
The time it was needed
Unheard or just ignored by the brute
My calls went unheeded

No means no
A phrase that’s everywhere
No means no
Doesn’t matter he didn’t care

Please don’t I remember pleading
But he’s got more power
And so I’m left with my insides bleeding
A harsh memory now a scar forever
No more human, I feel like just a numb thing

For months on end
I see you, a carefree unaffected man
So clueless, you like to pretend
Lying, claiming I am a fan

All these months I stood and saw
You hang with the guys, laugh and joke
Every second another part of me tore
While you sat socialised and drank your coke

Everytime I look at my wrist
I see your hand holding me down
Will I ever know if I was the first
Whatever I said it was like I never made a sound
But now with my sound you I curse

Wish I could cut my hand
At that point you held me
Wish I was in another land
So that human again I could be

The last year was filled with pain and tears
What do you do when true are your fears
I felt not worthy of people I cared about
Forgetting my friends, all I wanted to do was scream and shout

Soon a year later it will be
The incident and the pain, not yet just a memory
But stronger I am now
And today I take a vow

You will never own me or any other girl
Open the door and let justice come to your world
Your excuses and explanations are all lame
I may never be me again
But for you dear rapist it will be the end

For 11 months I tried to get my feelings down, but never could. Almost a year on this is what I managed. Sadly it doesnt even scratch the surface!

Could God Help Me?

Could God Help Me?
When I was struck down.
Watching my mother being posioned by a flower,
Sticking needles in the arm,
as if she called her savior.

Lost in the woods, Chained down,
To an iron crate, am I such a bad little boy?
To be beat again and again?
The blood runs thin from my mouth.

Thrown into the sewer like,
The piece of shit I am.
Starved nearly to death in jesus name,
Amen. Damn the Preacher’s hand.
He that condemned me to an awful numbness,
By beating the tears from my face.

Could I have changed? I was only 6

Would Jesus Sit me on his knee,
With all the other children?
Would he open his eyes to see?
Something different than the violence?
Abuse, the drugs and alcohol?

Could God save me?

While lying naked forced to suck
His minister off? And his son?
Could he have touched my life,
In not so perverse a way,
Instead, have given me faith?

Could God have saved me?

While saying grace, over an empty plate,
Eating from the left overs others waste?
Starring into the cold soul, of an overdose?
Watching so many dearly departed, in such awful ways?

Did he watch as I was raped?, Did he smile as he came?
Poisoning my drink? Some New Years party.
Or when, Some motherfucker, punched me square in the face,
Losing all my teeth, for trying to do the right thing,
And just walk away?

(God you can step in anytime…but…)
Could you have saved me?

As I laid naked in the street begging for release,
My my this drug has a hold on me.
Losing everything, but fear,
Fear of a dying man’s race. Could he?
When I lost my home, My job?
Again stranded in the streets
When My broken home, collapsed,
Heart broken, A man without a song.
Could he have saved?
Saved me, when he took love away,
Its long journey south of this place.
With amazing grace…
Could he?
NO! he just turned his head and walked away.

NO MORE, NO MORE

The Child cries, “No More! No more!”

The beatings never stop,
Till it’s to late,
Love is taught in many ways,
Pain maybe Hate,

With broken wings,
Angels cannot fly,
Beaten and raped,
Prepared to die,

Such is the child’s screams in the night….

All unheard…

“No More! No more!”
Bleeding, the pain still hurts,
His mother has raped his soul,
A body…bruised, and broken.
A heart that’s cold.

A child’s innocence is lost,
Never born,
A father amused and proud,
Of his masterpiece form,
His work,
Bloody, bruised, broken,
A violated child.

“No more! No more!”
“Enough is enough!”
“It hurts!”
The child screams.
Blood ridden victim,
Now tragedy…
Eyes scarred, tears streaming,
Becoming a macabre.
Bound to a father’s love
“You’re a man, real men don’t cry”
Papa says with each lashing.
Angels want to die.

Beating… Beating it never stops…
“No more…, No more…” whispered in final breath
Tortured…broken…sodomized…what’s left?
As he closed his eyes, angels did cry,
Asking forgiveness in, his parent’s sin,

“This is family, isn’t that right?”

Dad’s bloodstained hands,
Mom’s fulfillment of appetite,

The child lying in pools of blood urine and feces too,
Drowsed in semen and mom’s immorality too,
Mommy and Daddy just want to say “I love you”.

Child abuse is one thing No one should stand for, especially if it is your child.
One in three girls and one in five boys are sexually abused by an adult at some time during childhood. (Most sexual abusers are someone in the family or someone the child knows, not the proverbial stranger with a lollipop.)More than 80 percent of abusers are a parent or someone close to a child. Child abuse is far more likely to occur in the child’s home than in a day care center. Child sexual abuse has been reported up to 903,000 times a year, but the number of unreported instances is far greater.

I was a simple child once. I lived in a house.

When I was 11 I sat on a toilet at my Grammar School. I investigated the smell of dried blood in a paper lined receptacle.

I didn’t understand as I didn’t belong, not yet.

When I was 12 I sat on our toilet at home reading directions I had pulled from a box of tampons. It seemed easy enough.

I didn’t understand that life as I knew it was surreptitiously eroding.

When I was 13 I sat on the lap of a friend’s father, his oversized hands cupped my emerging breasts keeping me from leaving.

I didn’t understand my body or him.

Filth and grime, blood and hair; simplicity hid and what was once still is vacant.

When I was little, I wanted to be Cinderella, smiling every time my tiny fingers skimmed over the yellowed pages of my favorite book. It was torn and aging but I kept it under my pillow and felt safe knowing it was there. My mother would come into my bedroom every night and read it to me before bed. As her calming voice acted out the story I knew so well, the enchantment of overcoming struggle lingered inside my ignorant brain since I didn’t know any better.

When I got older, my mother stopped her nightly visits and started drinking. My father gambled our money away and instead, he was the one who snuck into my bedroom while my mother passed out on the couch. Every night, just as I was about to drift to sleep, he would approach and kiss me roughly on the mouth. I would try to pull away, but he’d grab my arm and kiss me harder. As I’d struggle to break free, I wondered when my fairy Godmother would come and rescue me.

“Be a good girl and give daddy what he wants,” he’d say and I remember wishing he wasn’t my daddy.

“No,” I’d cry over and over, but he wouldn’t care.

He would trap me beneath the heaviness of his massive frame as I would struggle to free myself from his grasp. His breath always reeked of tequila and he’d climb into my bed, forcing my hands down there, asking me to feel the ‘…..’ through his jeans.

That first night, he nailed me to the bed then invaded me as I choked on my own tears. To avoid the pain, I remembered the book, tucked safely underneath my pillow, and thought about all Cinderella had to overcome.

Then, he left me crying.

I held the white cloth, soaked in my own blood, wanting more than anything to be able to hurt him back. The blood that drained into my mouth drowned out my cries and he was quickly gone. He probably went to drink some more.

I waited for my fairy godmother. I called for her, cried for her, begged for her to come take me away, but it was no use. She didn’t respond to my pleas. At the time, I thought it was probably because I didn’t have a ball to go to. I wished to be somewhere else, anywhere else – a forest, a castle, anywhere but the wicked stepmother’s house – but maybe fairy godmothers only granted wishes to girls who wanted to go to the ball.

I wished to go to the ball, but still, she never came.

It happened once a week after that and was the same each time. It had almost become a ritual for him. After he would leave and I’d cleanse myself, I read about Cinderella, hoping she would make me feel safe again. As the words hammered inside my head, over time, I began to realize they were filled with lies. There was no such thing as Prince Charming or Happily Ever After. The Fairy Godmother was just a fantasy and the Wicked Stepmother could not be defeated. Evil always won.

Daddy kept coming back.

***

That final night, when I turned thirteen, after my father crept out of my room and my mother passed out again, I watched the familiar pages curl up inside the blazing fireplace as I finally realized why they call such stories fairy tales.

Once the pages burned, and the house went down, I bought myself a tight black dress and shiny vinyl boots with a credit card I stole from inside my mother’s dresser. I hitched a ride to Tijuana and got myself a fake ID card, drowning my troubles in a bottle of Jack Daniels as the man, whose name I didn’t know, sat next to me, waiting for his magic blow job and anticipating the moment he could cum on my pretty face and turn it ugly.

My hands shaking, the sour taste in my mouth, I hang on to whatever lies ahead, fearing the end of my innocence will bring about my destruction and make me a slave to my own destiny. All because my fairy godmother never came.

(Anti-Cinderella is a short piece that took years to write, It evolved and got longer through the years, but the core story stayed the same: the consequences of child sexual abuse. This is a theme I explored in my short film, The Birthday Gift, which received tremendous response from survivors. A part of me is still unhappy and sees this piece as unfinished, but I feel it’s time to get it out there. I hope this story speaks to them like my film did.)

A little girl of six
Who learned to read
Only A and B
And in Arabic, perhaps, this reads differently,
A little girl only six years old
Was murdered,
Ssssss…
Murdered by her father and her mother
In the name of family honor
Whose spirit
Had already been murdered
At the hands of foreign
Rapists
A little girl of only six
Murdered,
Ssssss…
Murdered
Time
After
Time
A little girl of six.
Little girl
Of
Shhhhhsix…

he sat there telling her some of the truth during the self congratulatory part of the constantly running, invisible documentary of his life presumably filmed by the angels and the ghost of ingmar bergman. the continuity was amazing except for those times when the machine was on the fritz. whole sections of the time he’d lived in idaho were missing, and most of his daughter’s pubescence — and there was that one section during his second marriage that had someone’s entire thumb in the lens. he absolutely never thought of those times though, so it was really a blessing in disguise. trouble was one day, one of the lost sections showed up on the front porch, when his girlfriend was home and dressed for company. she said, how the hell are you ? and showed the section around the house. the lost section said it was comfortable waiting for him in the living room, and, drinking tea out of the girlfriend’s china, told her all about the rape and the photos, about the big n slutty porn and something about tax evasion. the section was calm and pulled no punches. after a while though, he said he couldn’t wait any longer and stiffly stood and walked out of the house. when her boyfriend came home, all he said to the news of the return of the lost chapters was that if she’d really loved him, she wouldn’t have brought it up. later that night he shoved her awake in the lamplight and with it tight between his thumb and fore finger, snubbed his cigarette butt out on the pink area between her labia and the close canal. lucky for her, the constantly running, invisible documentary of her life had a finicky record button too. she would hurt for a few days, but pain never killed anyone, like he always said.

Linda Ravenswood’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flaming Arrows (Ireland), The Wilshire Review Volume 1 (Los Angeles), The Wilshire Review Volume 2 (Los Angeles), Enigma Magazine (England), Audemus formerly Mount Voices (Los Angeles), Poetry Salzburg Review (University of Salzburg Press, Austria), Relief Magazine ( Illinois, USA) , Opium Magazine (New York), Underground Voices (Los Angeles), ReadThis (University of Montana Press)  and on PBS.  She holds a BFA (Music, Theatre, Fine Art) from The California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and an MA (Humanities; Emphasis in Creative Writing) from Mount Saint Mary’s College.  She has lived extensively in the US, Ireland and the UK.  She is presently in Los Angeles pursuing her Ph.D.

A lonely little girl, terrified, hugging knees to chest in a solitary corner:
Is he gone? Is she safe?

Each day holds new dangers as she tiptoes across the tightrope of her life,
Lacking the comfort of a safety net below.
One false step and she’ll be gone.

Constant fear has stolen her voice. He knows she’ll never tell.
Who would listen to the halting, hesitant speech of damaged goods?
From the comfort of his safety net, he eyes her tightrope walk
With eager anticipation.

The days and weeks of silence become months and years.
Soon she forgets the value of her voice,
And others, weary with the work of speaking for two
Excuse her silence for shyness at best, rudeness at worst.

Her tightrope, if not comfortable, is at least familiar:
She knows each twist and knot along the way.
By day, she steps with calloused tiptoes across her tightrope;
By night, she curls into a ball and cries the dark away.

One day as she approaches the ladder to her tightrope torture,
She scorns the worn rungs, envying those who, instead of walking a tightrope of terror, fly.
How she longs for the wings to soar.
One last glance at her tightrope tormentor and her decision is firm:
She will fly.

The first flappings of her wings terrify her;
How will she survive in the changeful wind and blinding sunlight of the azure sky?
She almost leaves the dizzying heights.
Others, seeing her plight, do not mock, do not scoff, do not flutter off
But come alongside and help her on her way through the unfamiliar freedom of the air.

As she finds her wings, so too she finds her voice:
“I’d like to tell you my story.”

jsf 11-21-09

Screaming was always around me
Tears running down my face
Trying to silence his voice, her voice with my hands
Good touch, bad touch
Too young was I really to know
All the poking hurt
My body in so much pain
“Hurt me, not my brother”
Hating bath time
Terrified of bedtime
Liquor, the smell of his breath
I tried to imagine I was dreaming
It wasn’t me but another 6yr. old girl
That’s what I’d try to think
Trying to hide from the teacher’s looks
I always wanted my Daddy to come and take me away
My mother left my brother and me here
Here in this cold place
They were strangers, cruel people
Their oldest daughter never liked it when it was my bed he came to
She made me pay but I didn’t understand why
I was a baby
My mother didn’t want to know
Did she know?
Why were we left here?
When we lived with our mother in New Jersey
All she did was yell, scream and curse
I was like my Daddy
I wasn’t a normal child in junior high
So she hated me
I didn’t care
I hated her
It was because of her
Her doing
That I was violated, beaten
She didn’t care
“I should’ve had an abortion”
“You’ll never make it in life”
This is what she’d always say to me
I wished my brother and I would’ve been with our Daddy
I wished we were with someone safe who loved us the right way
We would have been safe
She’d yell at everyone
For any reason
She’d beat on you something fierce
Hating that I only wanted my Daddy
I begged him to take us away
“Please Daddy! We don’t want to go back. Please Daddy!”
She had her ways
Cleaning had to be done her way and that was that
Laundry, garbage, ironing, hanging clothes on the hangers,
The way things were folded and put away, the vacuuming,
Making dinner, dishes….
If I didn’t do it right “her way”
I’d get hit with whatever was within her grasp
A wiffleball bat, a hot iron on my right thigh, a phone thrown in my face
“Slut, slut, slut”
That was her nickname for me (even though I was a “virgin”)
I’d never be anything, a loser
I’d never get my H.S. diploma
She kicked me out right before senior year finals
My ex-boyfriend Don’s Mom welcomed me into her home
She took me in, no questions asked
Disgusted with what my “Mother” had done to my face for the VERY LAST TIME
Yet this time, I fought back, I defended myself
Don’s Mother didn’t want all my hard work over the past 4 years to count for nothing
My Daddy sending her money to help with my expenses
Due to her and Don
I had the opportunity to take my final exams
Driving me to school every day
On graduation day
I got ready with my new “Mother”
A gift from my Daddy and her, a new outfit to look my best
Cap and gown, services ending with diplomas
Then here comes “this woman”
Saying, “I knew you could do it!”
To my curiosity, I turned and asked, “Why?”
“My baby is going to a good college because I pushed her to succeed.”
“I’m so proud of you.”
I almost vomited
I then told her that it was because of Don, his Mother,
My guidance counselor, my Daddy, and me
I succeeded because of me, for me
I never wanted to be her
A failure, a tyrant, unfaithful spouse
A person who’d feed on her young and others
An abuser
She was never worthy of the name ‘Mother’
She would never be my Mother
I would and could never be her.

i speak to you now, hear me before my head explodes…
i need you to understand this flesh
it holds many memories, many scars

babies have been housed here, like nesting birds with the sweetest song
babies have travelled down the path
that you explore with your fingers, your breath

i have allowed you into all of me
hear me now
the birds have built a temple of this space
hung beads from the ceiling, soft pink wallpaper
delicate wallpaper

understand me
birds have built a temple of this space

the windows are broken, hear me say this
there are no more birds, they flew away a long time ago
the carpets are full of sickness

this temple
no longer a temple
gleaming gold and rosy love
but the darkest shadow in the darkest forest
hiding away
hear me when i say

birds have decorated this space
in all of their innocence
they have shone all of their wisdom
burnt their initials
in the delicate wallpaper

they have built a temple of this space

This piece was written days after I was sexually assaulted by someone that I trusted.  I was very angry and writing helped me feel sane.

I’m tearing apart inside and out nothing to say, drowning about

this sea of darkness, swirling around me is making me dizzy

in this misery of feelings. Hurting inside wanting to scream

no one is there to hear me, crashing down like thunder rolling

I’m lost in this maze, sadness is here, I am fading away…

is anyone there does anyone care, I’m isoloated from the world

torn apart and blue, all I need is you, your gone your not there

I’m twisted apart…Falling fading…I’m torn for eternity..