Conversations Among the Ruins

During this walk
the sun was just
coming up - that

awkward dim of
the sunlight just
as it rises.

Covered in mud
limping
and confused about

what had just
taken place. I don't
remember what if

any amount of
blood there was.
Just a baseball bat

and a swamp and
my lungs
burning.
It was cold

and I walked right
back up into the house
of the person

that left me there
laid down in bed
next to him - I moved

only to rip off
the once white
shirt.

I had picked it out
to wear for my
senior pictures.

I never made it
to those photos.

I never made it
to the prom.

I never made it to
graduation.

But I made it right
back up there
in his bed - he didn't

even move or say
a word. I was just
the dead walking

anyway. What
was the difference

between silence
and noise?

Segments of
it being halloween and
the next memory

is valentines day
because that's how
long the run

of speed lasted.

I did everything
but kill myself
to forget him.

To ignore those
imprints. To not
have to say

how I had been beat,
and left, and how

my family
and everybody else
around me

ignored it.

Not today.

Today I am happy
to watch him

wait tables
listlessly in

between jail
times

in the town
of which's streets

I visit
once a year.

You had
your life

coming,

mother fucker
and today

as I write out
everything you
ever did to me

so I can finally
let it all go

that
fact
sure makes me
smile

"He walked into the hospital four hours after I gave birth and told me to rip the IV's out of my arm and that I could leave, and he would love me forever now. He called me everything I ever wanted to hear him call me, and it didn't matter. Twenty four hours later he raped me. These cops found me on Lake Shore Drive with my car facing South in the north lane and took me home, told me to get some help instead of arresting me because I had my hospital discharge papers. I woke up the next day and it was the first day of Spring in Chicago. I was confused about how I wasn't pregnant any more. Like I didn't remember any of it. I remember clearly touching my stomach and realizing there wasn't anything in it any more. I went and saw the baby and her family for Easter, it was that next weekend It is my last crystal clear memory. Just that first spring day, seeing my car parked on Wilson. Signing adoption surrenders I don't remember, I only remember placing my finger in a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee, before the lawsuit of it being too hot that swept the country, so I wouldn't cry. I just sat there and peeled all of the layers of skin off of my fingers and he stared at me, playing some eye contact game, smirking at me.

I didn't want to cry in front of him. I don't remember any of that, except burning my finger and when they were finally done tape recording me filling out the paperwork, literally just turning my back on that man and my social worker to go light a cigarette. I haven't stopped smoking since I started that day since. I walked down that hall but I couldn't walk out of the house.

We went to some store after that, on Belmont. Got into some huge fight. He threw all of my stuff in the middle of the room that night and told me to go home back to my parents. That if I didn't meet him there in an hour he would never talk to me again.

I hadn't seen my parents or my house since January and now it was April and I had to just walk in there or he would never see me ever again. So that's what I did. I remember two things. 1, that they said I lost a lot of weight, and 2, that as I stared at them all I could see was the fifty pages of my initials and signature, cynapse spasm pictures of being in the hospital, lemon pepsi, and waking up to my art project/ sculpture of a cat that looked like a bomb shattered all around the room and bits of it in my skin.

And I"m not sure if I've ever come up here to specifically point out

that I fucking hate you, Alex, for all of that. Because I know in the back of your haunted attic head I exist as a triple goddess, an untouchable, and you are far beyond zero.

You are a void to me. A void capable of the way you feel when Ted Bundy gazes out from a printed picture. Beautiful and charming and all too capable of using it as pointed destruction. You're the exact same rat race you have always been, and for her sake I will never, ever in my life speak of that to those ears because I know I won't ever have to, as you are a living fucking example of yourself.

Because you taught me everything and because of my strength she will never, in her life, be exposed to a person such as yourself with the reaction I had.

It's nine years later and I just sat on the phone telling that story. I can't even believe my life. Sincerely. I'm all about the rubber band ball of which is my current situations but when I go back lately each time I go back deeper because I can see and feel more clear.

Heather Kwaite was murdered by her husband almost a year ago to this date. She was my friend, and she didn't make it out. This is the non for profit created as a direct result of her death. Spread the word, because having conversations about domestic violence saves lives. I still lack the capacity most of the time to look at it all for what it really was.

But I live. Every day I look up at Heather's picture looking down at me from a shelf and put my bullshit into perspective. She is the triple goddess, the untouchable. Same girls same name, one very big difference.

http://www.heathersvoice.org/7.html

Sometimes I
drive down
streets you've

never touched,
a blank gaze
for a stop light

my head just
says

"Motherfucker."

I never took
the time to care
about myself
enough

to hate
you. Maybe
it's the way

you've never
touched these
streets, this
air, and what

I would give
to be like
them. Or

possibly the
way
she asked me

why you weren't
there
when she
was

born.
With a wide
eyed

innocent
look.

Likely, it's in
the way, that
after all these

years, I
defended
you. I carefully
painted you, and

how
I realized
that I didn't
do it
for her, but
myself.

I didn't say
"He's a
dumb
motherfucker

that liked to
hit me and
never cared

about you." I
said "Honey
he just wasn't

as old
as I
had to be."

I would
scare you
in the way

I gaze
at
stop lights.

Driving down
the streets
wearing a face

you'll never

touch.

He had insisted
that he get a
cat.

I was pregnant.
"You're just
pregnant."

The cat
slept on my
neck

suffocating me
we named him
Sebastian but
called

him
Ash because
that's what

we would have
named our
child.

I was suffocating
in a doctors
office

trying to drink
orange
syrup because

I was pregnant
and he
insisted

that he get
a cat. I don't
remember

if I ever said
that I was
allergic

because
had I
he would have just
gotten
two

instead.
I was choking
and choking and
choking on

that syrup.
Eighteen
alone in an office
where they

slapped me to
find my vains.

I hate cats and
orange syrup and
mostly

the person
that got that
stupid cat and

left me there
to drink that
thick orange

liquid. Choking
back tears
in the stale

January
air.

I am an untouchable
and you are invalid.

I proved to you
I was capable when

I
got out of
the lake you
tried to leave me
in

I proved to you
I was capable when
the bat to my head

didn't leave me
dead on a garage
floor.

I proved to you
I was capable when
you walked out on me
in that

hospital. But you
just watch the
pretty colors

instead and
sleep tight
as hard as you can

tonight.

/
I don't remember/
a thing.