Reviews Requested- Contains upsetting material - A Poem: Sticks, Stones and Cigarette Burns...
A true story from long ago.
I remember laying there in the A&E covered in bruises that SHE gave to me.
Punches, kicks, they all felt like bricks landing on me from a great height.
I did not fight. I couldn't. She made me feel like I shouldn't fight back because
after all, she was a woman and who would believe a man being abused, used up and spent...
my soul felt like it was sent to hell.
Who could I tell?
Who would believe that me... at the time, a 22 year old geordie was being hit?
Called so many hurtful names and made to feel like ****, I took every beating.
Suicidal thoughts arrived, although fleeting.
Sticks and stones may break your bones, but cigarette butts burn and turn your skin into
a tapestry of sorrow that offers no hope and no promise of a better tomorrow.
So I'd cut and cause myself the pain because I'd know when to stop...
It didn't hurt as much as the lip she'd pop over and over again
to the point when I thought I'd go insane and as the abuse took it's toll
I'd continue to cut. At least I'd have something of mine to control.
Then came the night that I ran. The night it all changed
my mind was deranged but but the voice in my head told me that if this continued,
i'd be dead by morning.
I was free
but take this poem as a warning...
Sometimes the pain is hidden and this kind of abuse, it's a taboo forbidden.
MAN UP they'd say in such a way as to suppress my voice and give me no choice but keep my mouth shut.
Never again...
Never again...
Never again...
|