Spring Cleaning: For Survivors

( This poem is in my new book “ Soul Psalms”)

Sunday afternoon

4 p.m.

Spring cleaning

From the inside

OUT

Haven’t scrubbed you out of my hair

since we made love

Not since your hands raped me

Muffled my body screams with your expert soft lips

Suffocating my soul

It’s been years now

And I had to exorcise you from my vagina

Ask the moon to baptize me

With my own cycle blood

Castrate my labia

So that there would be nothing left

of your reign/rain.

Spring cleaning

Sunday afternoon

4 p.m.

Spring cleaning

From the inside out

And I have removed my teeth since you left

Replaced them with bamboo sticks

I don’t care that they are yellow

I’d rather have a sun-kissed mouth

Hell, you thought you stole my sun

And I have rearranged my organs

Hid my heart well this time

Underneath my stomach

Perhaps the acid there would blind you

I vomit the gallons of saliva you shoved down my

throat in the name of love

I am now bathed in God’s love,

Self-love

And I wear my friends and family like a crown

Sanctified in truth

I need not repent for it is you who have sinned

Spring cleaning

Sunday afternoon

4 p.m.

Spring Cleaning from the inside

OUT.