Sarah Kelly.

20 year-old poet, activist and student; leo, queer, femme and unapologetic about it.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

& When my Rapist Tries to Contact Me

I am reminded of the way my body is a burial ground for broken men yet i am constantly becoming sacrifice first, my father tongue like a slingshot leaving the the statue i was becoming shattered every time a man has put his hands on me since i felt each one digging in the exit wound i have become & now as i rebuild myself into a coliseum turn my blood into an army ready for the war that is coming rather than evidence of my carnage i race toward the future slash & burn & claw my way home.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

Give yourself permission to feel your trauma deeply. To be gentle with yourself. To give yourself time & space to heal. Give yourself permission to believe yourself.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

morning.

You put a handful of pills in your mouth & drafted a suicide text last night. You knew you couldn’t send it until after you swallowed or else you’d just be looking for attention. A funny spot to be stuck, between wanting to say “goodbye” & “I love you” while simultaneously wanting to cut off everybody who was ever good to you. The box cutter you stole from your minimum wage retail job is pressed against the creped skin of your thigh.You pine after the cold metal & sharp edge. You long to have edges that sharp, to rid yourself of your fatal softness. You press, but do not cut & drag like you usually do. The steady pressure eventually causes a single drop of blood to drip down your leg. The pills are still in your mouth, & you think about how you tell everyone you are trying. Trying to get help, trying to go to therapy, trying to get better. You are not supposed to be this mess anymore; you are not supposed to be the person who makes their body mushroom cloud after every inconvenience. & yet here you are, billowing & bursting. Your therapist did not text you back & you are worried. It seems you keep reaching out for help but your arm is too short. It seems like you are in a room without any doors or windows & you have no idea how you got here or how to get out. All you know is that you must get out. When you choose to go to bed instead of swallowing the tiny blue-green bulbs on your tongue, do not qualify it. Even if you only have one reason to keep moving, you’re still moving. Your reason is that you do not want your mother or sister to be awoken by the cops in case someone is worried by your goodbye. Your reason is because you care about your loved ones. Do not lose this compassion. The only untouched part of you still needs to live for someone, even if someone is not yourself. Let your body settle in the dust of what was nearly a graveyard. Your therapist responds to your message in the morning.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

for those like me, longing to be radically in love with themselves

I refuse to believe that we are infinite machines bodies like endless containers of trauma it needs to go somewhere. does it defy science if trauma makes us tender? she rises & falls breathless as her softness waits at the door eager love in a new suit with the cologne she loves to hate why is the vulnerability more sinful than it is saintly? standing on the precipice the cathedral of my perpetually broken spirit the one that cries because a platonic love wants space the one that hurts when she couldn’t take her sister’s place in an accident how can a soul nearly destroyed by trauma be so willing to hold another’s in the pit of her belly? the world will tell me making myself this raw this much of a place to fall is a weakness will unhinge me praise the god of pillows the god of overflowing tears & bursting giggles I am forever learning & relearning to thank god for my radical tenderness praise the god of this body she looks a lot like the hope I’ve been craving all this time.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

learning & relearning / to thank god for my radical tenderness

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

the morning after

& so she came back under street lights & shards of glass hospitals will always smell like everything that has ever taught itself to fade. she is in my body the gut reaction the toothache the way I forget to breathe when I panic she is a younger more concrete version of me without all the dotted lines & pessimism when trying to write a poem about my baby sister or, rather how I almost lost her my throat cannot expand & contract enough for this to spill all over my dashboard she, the pretty one the sheltered one the one who even scars beautifully or me tornado of dirt & hell kicked up from wasteland drenched in longing for the end of me we all know who should have been in that car we all know who would have feared death less & so I do not speak or cry in front of her how do I say I’m sorry without sounding like a cry for help? how do I say I need you without sounding like I went through every stage of grief in twenty minutes that night & so my father says not to think “what if” he does not know all I say to myself is “what next?”

[crybabydyke-deactivated20180227]

The phrase “you don’t know what you have until it’s gone” can apply to terrible things too. You may not realize the amount of pain, depression, or abuse you are living through until you experience what life can be without it

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

Valentine’s Day, the Reprise

I don’t know how to relate to love poetry I relate to the feeling of putting my whole existence in the care of someone else but I have never shared that responsibility I used to say I’d been in love when really I’ve been the subject of lust token home wrecker good enough for a good night always too much to live in any kind of harmony with. do not learn love at the bottom of a shot glass she will not take the time to get to know your name & that is the only thing you will ever deserve to be called. I am learning to hold my body gently rather than between two fingers like a dead plant she rests in the palm of my hand maybe still bruises & wilted but growing. champion goddess of skin & bone of unkempt compassion remember: your pearl teeth were never meant to entertain them. keep your ruby blood hidden she your secret weapon & a war is on its way. you are not forgotten you are blooming in time. you are not forgotten you are worthy of so much more than this.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

aftermath // overflow

I spill my coffee on the kitchen counter & my life suddenly feels less permanent like things are shifting like my limbs are dragging themselves through this deep bronze liquid caught in the mess I keep making when did I become so entitled that I expect my loved ones to hold this beast in their hands? I did not mean to make you absorb it I did not mean to expect you to come undone for me & yet time after time I am loading each person attached with this wreckage & I think about death & how it’s usually the least painful for the focal point for the one beneath the dirt leaving those left behind to fumble with its sting & I wonder if that’s how life works how when I’m destroying myself I’m killing everyone around me, too. I only ever asked for broken glass to my skin I tried hard not to bleed into your veins but I guess when I’m bursting from every crack in my shipwrecked body the splatter will reach you if you stay long enough. so I pick up the pieces wipe up the coffee yet still feel like I have exploded everywhere losing everything.

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

for my soul, who is uncertain

I am wandering city streets full of drugs & whatever the opposite of joy is my watch whispers “5:30 am” & the time is never enough to pull me back to shore I am floating with no raft I want to be safe but I don’t want anyone to save me. This is the moment I realize that I do not know if recovery is a noun or a verb I do not know if I have the energy to think about anything other than killing myself. the tree next to me is one of a few planted on city sidewalks & I want to be her sprouting and new in the face of concrete I stopped remembering how to grow I am high on uppers & for the first time in months I am not bitter I hate that this light inside me only shines with help only gleams artificially but isn’t that hope? to remember she is still with me even buried by all this darkness that maybe therapy has the potential to find her even when the drugs wear off. isn’t that hope? accepting help from a stranger when the only thing stranger than your barely beating heart is the fact that it’s still beating maybe I am a cave dripping & full of depth but still, there is an exit I just need a little help reading directions.

[buttonpoetry]

Here, you are not a failure or less of a person because you make mistakes. I am not a failure or less of a person because I make mistakes.

Sierra DeMulder - “After Googling Affirmations for Abuse Survivors” (via buttonpoetry)

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

For My Body, In Memoriam

you have always been half vinegar, half honey hide your sadness with a little bit of laughter until your teeth rot out you learned yourself to be a product of all things lost & the things you carry like the way your father could never show he loved you or the times men decided your body was not yours to begin with or the choices you made not to tell anyone not to go to the police after all, how can I reclaim my autonomy if it never even existed in the first place? still, I feel an utter responsibility to take up my cross and bear it in the court room but I am no Christ figure perhaps this is how they will justify my crucifixion their assumptions make my crown of thorns they’ll play lots for my dignity who gets the privilege of ripping me open first the honor will always go to my rapist & yet, I’m not sure what’s worse the initial thorns in my side or the way people keep digging inside to see how fresh the wound is. body, mosaic of trauma body, burning bush in the desert maybe they’ll build a shrine to the ashes she leaves when the jury clears his name. I realize this is every reason I cannot go to the police but my cross is still mounted upon my back as the guilt & the guilt & the guilt try over & over again to pin me up against the wall.

[juansendizon]

People shrink when they are unable to express their loneliness.

Juansen Dizon (via juansendizon)

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

Traffic Between Center Street and Fairview

I drove past my rapist’s house today & the cavity in my chest became a canyon black hole ready to swallow everything I once could learn to love about myself & trust in other people.

I drove past my rapist’s house today thought about crashing my car into his bedroom window thought about crashing my body through the windshield of that car I’ll take every picture off his wall & paint it with my blood let it read: “you cannot pretend anymore.”

I drove past my rapist’s house today & never thought about his death but had a thousand thoughts about mine about leaving my body to decompose on his lawn why do I hold all of this rage that is not mine to carry? why do I let the flame of this anger burn me at the stake when I am not the witch?

I drove past my rapist’s house today because I needed somewhere to leave this fear I drove past my rapist’s house today to prove I am worth the anguish not the cause of it to prove I am scorching a hole into my chest with purpose.

[buttonpoetry]

Thomas Fucaloro, “God Is a Cigarette I Want to Smoke”. Watch Thomas’ full poem!

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

November 26th, 2017: A Eulogy

A cough has carried me through this season Perhaps, only to remind me i have a voice as my lungs collapse onto each other it seems like everything i thought i knew has failed in transmission. I am a product of betrayal a product of unlearning the people & places I forgot would hurt me Have you ever seen a body so opaque it did not even see itself? after the boy pushed his way inside the teeth below my belt I only wished they had cut him first. the boy, i had just learned to trust the boy, with whom casual sex had never seemed violent yet my teeth met his claws again leaving my inner thigh scarred leaving my voicebox empty only gifting me with this goddamn cough coughing up blood coughing up nothing Have you ever seen a voice so shaken it did not even hear itself?

[sarahdactylll-blog1]

And they told me to confront him

But for what

if not a single hand

an entire fist

my whole body

swallowed by his skin

his heart was a mouth

wide open

I came unshaped

for him

ended up unhinged

anyway

do not be confused:

this is still all about sex

until it isn’t

& why would I ask him

why he went to places

he was not welcome

is that not an invitation

for him to keep

coming inside?