IMOGENE’S NOTEBOOK
The Split
A poem on surviving abuse
I braced myself,
and unwrapped my body.
Laid it all out
as it is —
round, wrong and desecrated
by slurry judgements.
Mostly from me,
if you count their voices
burrowing deep in my head.
Every extra pitiful bite
I shove down my aching throat
towards an already full,
bursting stomach
does nothing
to fill the hungry, sucking hole
in my chest, pulsating
like a neutron star
about to collapse into itself
This body —
my first and only home,
a repository of sorrow and terror
and everything unlovable
— is coming apart,
like a loaf of soft bread.
Why do I allow myself
to be a statistic?
Why do I continue to alter
the landscape of my body
with food, because
I could not protect it from
their touch?
Why do I not
claw through the layers
of my skin and fat
to rescue and embrace
that wounded, hungry animal inside
and let it out to scream
and sniff out and shatter
those wayward hands to
smithereens?
And once that feral thing
is done fending,
why do I not feed love and light
and kindness
to its bloodied mouth?
Even though,
all I have known is a steady
diet of dull neglect.
A survivor, I carry in me
the perpetrators
I could not confront.
I rip my consciousness in two;
recreate the conflict,
bear the blame and fix it, too.
Thank you for reading!
© 28th January 2024. Anushree Bose. All Rights Reserved.
