(Poem) 'Cause of Death: I Still Dream About You Twice a Week'
CAUSE OF DEATH: I STILL DREAM ABOUT YOU TWICE A WEEK.
By Alice Briselden-Waters
Power lies
within your sheets,
After you are done you hang me out to dry
Pegging up a body suit
I can no longer inhabit nor shed the skin you have touched now
I am silicone on trial to be preserved as a public service
You dispose of me so eagerly
But my emotions will recycle
Sometimes, I forget there was a person beneath your tainted touch
Whilst your governed freedom remains untouched
These bleak societal norms,
Would have it that it’s meant to hurt
My vagina is meant to bleed to fit you sir
It was tense, but won’t slot into my passed
See, I wish, I had screamed, so loud, I woke your mother, your sisters
Your father from his misogynistic slumber
Awoken by the shock,
Every time I dream of you I wake up with a feeling…
It will be okay if I loved you, right? It will make this all go away…?
The Stockholm syndrome seeps into my subconscious
Keeps me hating myself by those that I fear, I loved
You sycophant, you saint, how dare you paint your hate as endearing
Then steal the lungs of women in the night,
She cannot name you gods gift, yet let you do the devils work without reprimand
There is not a clean finger on either of your hands
You have spat on every one with her genes
To lubricate your pornographic forensic scenes
You were always hiding in plain sight, permission given to perpetuate fright,
Here’s your get out of jail free card,
Sincerely the patriarchy
Because “she was always gonna sleep with me!”
Did you even ask? Or did you scare me into submission?
Your infection of my body society fully commissioned.
The man that told others to look after me was the boy that hurt me the most
You were meant to hold me in your arms and protect me
Instead you forced me
To see masculinity is a violent dichotomy
Informing me where you’d bury me, eventually
Power lies
drying liquid
on my churning stomach
in your bed.
Credit to Melissa Broder @sosadtoday for the poem’s title.