Eleven (3/23/2011)
I was 8
8 When I told you that I loved you this big
I was 9
9 When I told you I was la tua amore, your love and you chuckled because I messed up the article of the masculine word for love
because love was always female to me.
I was 10
10 when you started coming into my room
Asking me to share in your secrets without using words
And I complied and I resisted
And I felt pleasure and I felt pain
And most of all I felt complicit and guilty and guilty and guilty.
I was 11 when mom started asking why I locked my door at night
And I didn’t answer
Because she was your wife and was I cheating on my own mother?
11 when I lay awake night after night when my door didn’t lock anymore
when I came up with schemes to protect my dreams from your desires
And sometimes, they worked
And sometimes…
I was 12 when you finally stopped because my insides started to bleed
And I never hated my period for that
My blood saved my life
And only because it could give life to more of my blood
How fucked up is that?
And for years now
I wanted to write you a letter
To tell you how it felt to be eleven and scared
How it felt to be eleven and betrayed
How it felt to be eleven and hold in my chest a secret so big for so many years
It felt like the pressure unstitched my heart and hid it
in a little girl’s closet
Underneath science fare projects, awards, and diplomas of 4.0s
That never quite made up for it
I wish I could convey this eloquently
How it felt
But all I can think of to say is that
I was eleven fucking eleven
I wanted to write you a letter
To see if you remembered
If you even remembered
But I don’t know how to start a conversation that ends with
Why me, dad?
I don’t know how to tell you I was little
And still believed in Santa Claus
And waited for my knight in shining armor
And thought with my broken little heart I could save the world
From all the bad guys
I dressed up like Supergirl for Halloween
And went on hunger strikes because people were starving in the world;
I was a good girl
I don’t know how to tell you I remember
Every time I close my eyes and someone gets close to my hips
I remember
Every time a lover gently caresses my body with his or her lips
I remember
They call it flash backs
I hear
But after 16 years of being eleven
And my body tightening and my chest constricting
And having to explain to lover after lover that it’s not their fault
I call it cruel
I don’t know what it was that you wanted me to learn
Maybe that men can’t be trusted
Maybe that life isn’t fair
Or that some things, you can never take back.
Maybe you didn’t have a lesson to teach
Maybe you just got off looking at my little body
like the creepster in Lolita
Except that I wasn’t a fictional character
And it was too real
And maybe this letter is for naught
You’re old now; what good would it do anyway
To open a can this old and rusty
Those squirmy pink worms have been waiting so long to be put on a hook
They’ve suffocated
Grey and dehydrated like pubic hair on your wilted flesh
You tell me what good it would do.
Except that their spirits still haunt me
You tell me
Why me, dad?
