She slept on charcoal feathers
Tripping over her favorite pink sneakers;
Holding her painful breaths
Like children of her age hold stuffed animals
Lustful smiling eyes, spitting venom across her tiny limbs
Her wings ripped off with the drop of his pants
Her pleading eyes asked: “Is this fun for you, to hear my screams?”
To watch me pressed against your 50yr old body
And make me scrub blood from the white marble floor
My lungs gasped for oxygen
When my confession to Mom went in vain
You made them believe I was crying foul
My bones hurt more than a hairline fracture
But your gnashing tooth bit me for the rapture
Every night I wondered how much I can take; or if there was an escape
If only someone would have listened
To the screams and the pleads
How nice it must be
To shut the toy train hooting
And travel away like you never savored my body.
(The backdrop of the poem is the menace and trauma of child sexual abuse)