nothing
but the ghost
of you
left
Tag: memory (Page 1 of 2)
her hair
lifeless white
and drooping
fissured with story
scars write
themselves
between breasts
with red ink
trembling accuracy
words that spent tears
like fortune
the wind lifted my hair
and I was a little girl again
in play with the elements
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 11
Content Warning: Childhood sexual curiosity, religious themes, and mature content.
Every single Sunday, I looked forward to that drive into town for one reason alone. Horse balls.
As long as I can remember, there stood a stallion statue above the sinner’s den where alcohol was consumed by trade of cash. This thing was life-sized and packin’. That horse was holy to me.
I’d get to trembling as the family station wagon drew near, roll onto my back, and look up through the window, in a time before seatbelts were the law, and too many kids meant some rode in the trunk, lying down low so the cops didn’t spot us.
Holy balls, that horse’s stuff swung low, sweet chariot, right into an eyeful.
I felt all hot and tingly, wondering if my future husband would have one like that. I’d carry such thoughts with me right into church and smile, stars in my eyes, with such a secret.
For religious purposes, of course.
Future husband worshipper in training.
-Lily
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 10
Content Warning: Candid reflections on self-harm, trauma, sexual control, coercive dynamics, and mature themes.
He was strange, but I’m also strange. We had an agreement I could bite myself when he allowed me to. It helped me feel safe, like punishment had come and gone. He wanted me to belong to him. No one has ever wanted me. My heart still hurts about it, but it goes deeper than him.
Somehow he’d hit that sweet spot that triggered me out. I know now… that wasn’t a good thing. At the time, that was a warning, but home feels like home, and unbeknownst to me, we were running thin on protectors he hadn’t burned through. So there I was, biting the hell out of my arm and showing him the marks I’d left. Seemed fine enough.
As far as I knew up front, he just wanted to control my orgasms, and hey, I didn’t know what the fuck to do with that, but why not. He liked my old-fashioned name. Thanks, it’s from the Bible. I’m our jailer, though, not a saint.
I was completely overwhelmed by his attention, desire, and need for me to submit to him. I thought I couldn’t be broken, and I was. Just like they were before me.
-Judith
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 5
Content Warning: Candid reflections on childhood sexual abuse, trauma, dissociation, sexuality, and complicated attachment.
I loved him like I loved my father. A man who could know me. A man who saw me, cared for me, and protected me from becoming someone I’m not, too worldly. And for him I became carnal, falling fast down to earth.
I woke up from the deepest sleep. I was never supposed to, and somehow I did. Miracle one. He loved to talk with me and loved my influence. No one knew of me but he and my father. I kept inside, and he drew me out. My child heart said he saved me like my father did. He told me his name meant savior. He had a heavy darkness like my father, that I could bear because I could shine for him bright enough to balance it. Only later do I understand it is not my purpose to balance men’s darkness in that way.
I have dark too, I learned in my time with him. My dark is Lilith. We were kept separate. I could not know her and love my father. She could not come close to me and continue to hold back the truth from my awareness.
He desired I become carnal for him, and so I did, just like I would listen to my father as a small child and his needs. I don’t naturally feel a desire for it and neither a disgust. To me, all things exist and they just exist. Possibility does. Variety does. Sex does, and how that need is met is important, and the rest is personal religion.
I don’t regret, and I do not pity us. I feel deep gratitude for all of my life. The dark and the light. The interplay, the constraint, the restraint, the beauty and the chaos.
I am named Star.
-Star
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 2
Content Warning: Candid reflections on adolescent sexual awakening, religious conditioning, and mature themes.
I went to church and I worshipped. There wasn’t much that didn’t seem completely phallic to me and vaginal. All the floral dresses and lace-collared women. Scant makeup and Avon’s best perfumes wafting behind them. Round butts and strong, wide calves.
I looked up to them, especially the different ones. The new-to-the-place ones. Not broken into our area’s flavor ones.
The old men with the stiff leather shoe wear and tie clasps. Ties being their main standout in dress code. White undershirts peeking through thin dress shirts carefully buttoned to the throat.
I guess they all wore their own collars just like the women did.
The pillars, the pulpit, the pews, all stiff cocks, built by men for our round behinds to sit upon and be graced.
I guess I got a dirty mind, but someone had to. I mean, it’s right there to see. I guess I took “picture them all naked” and made it my own.
I made it my business to keep an eye on the children. It kinda already was my business, being a young lady in training for her own brood of tiny worshippers one day.
I kept watch over them and led them from harm as often as I saw danger ahead. I loved daydreaming about marriage and being a momma. Getting involved as an Avon rep, possibly.
I also loved looking at my calves, wonderin’ when they’d fill out and hoping there were other righteous perverts around my age just waiting to date me.
Lots of my prayers turned out like:
Dear God, let him be kind, strong, and respectable. Let his ties hang loose and his shirt only button so far. Let my future husband be quiet like me, protective of the kids, and also very interested in the sex I wasn’t allowed to have until married after a string of requirements met.
-Lily
From the Wild Collective Heart series: Part 1
Content Warning: Mature themes involving childhood trauma, coercive control, and psychological fragmentation.
I would be the jailer in our world.
Responsible for turning in parts of self that malfunctioned, were too tired to finish tasks, or in some other way fucked up that could result in our whole community being punished for as long as it takes… To this day, none of us know how long it takes.
We split like over-ripe cherries to the pit in those times and conditions and couldn’t be none of our business all together.
I’d bring them down the steps to the underground and place them in the cell where the window only showed the crooked smile of the moon’s slit mouth biting into dark.
I’d sternly talk to them about the repercussions and the monsters they now had to fear. Sometimes punishments involved that. Adults wearing masks or hairy costumes showed children of the community how to become monsters in our world. The children learned well. They hopped around snarling at the no good, scaring the hell out of them back into line, or getting them decommissioned at worst. Mostly, just put to sleep a long while.
A lot of work goes into creating the conditions for splitting cherries. We were valuable energy spent to our handlers.
Nice to know you.
My name’s Judith. Our story isn’t linear. It will need to be told in the mode of survival it happened.
I came about just to oversee the demons and condemn them as was needed. I’ve seen my fair share of horror and was given that information to know how steep the punishment we could expect.
I loved my handler like homemade cherry pie, sweet and tangy, dark inside.
-Judith
I fall into your
crystalline warmth
structures resurface
long forgotten
kept