I wrote this January 2017, right after the inauguration. I was living in DC at the time about three blocks from the White House and I would have a panic attack every time I saw a MAGA hat. I had just the month prior realized the sexual aspect of my trauma and now was working 15 hours a week and had school full time and was drowning, drowning. I didn’t feel real for months. I make or made videos to my poems. This one was DC at night, the empty streets of Foggy Bottom, American flags, empty doorways, the White House grounds.
I don’t know how to be anymore
I don't know how to be anymore
The very things I once loved feel like trap doors
Sliding, sliding, into the snake pit that is anxiety
And memories I don't want.
There's only one thing I want to talk about
Only one thing I want to express
Only one thing I want to overcome
But the words are dull like unpolished silver
And my tongue is dry like a salted sliver
Of meat.
The very thing I loved betrayed,
Silver’s spoil is newfound pain,
I grasp for something to relate to
But end up alone. Could these pains
Correlate to something more than me?
A martyr for a great cause, it's tendrils
Reaching every woman and man
Who has seen through my eyes
And felt the demise of the soul
So abounding that your grandfather’s
Face brings you shame.
I want to give in, to let it take over
But over and over again I say
Another day.
Another day.