Should Have Told. Poem by Terry Collett

Should have told them years ago,
you mutter to the windowpane, told
them about the man who had said
he would take you to see the place

you used to live in the country and
to show you the old cottage where
you lived with your family as a girl,
but he didn't, he molested you in his

car, once he'd driven into a wooded area,
and you and he were alone, and you
said: what are you doing? You've asked
for it, he said, asked for it each time

you gave me that smile, each time
you laughed at my jokes. You became
dumb, words wouldn't come, and even
though you tried to stop him, he did

it anyway, and you watched him like
an onlooker to an incident out of your
control. Once he'd done he lay back
in his seat and said: our secret this,

and he grinned. You looked at your
dress, how he had ripped it at the end,
and how to explain that. Our secret,
he said as he drove you back again,

and dropped you outside your workplace.
But you said nothing; just went home
and said you'd torn the dress at work,
and threw your underclothes in a bag

and in the bin. Now years have past
after your umpteenth mental breakdown
and now at the hospital in the lock ward
at the barred window, the psychiatrist

behind at his desk, and you had told
him it all: just poured out of you like
vomit all over his desk, in his face,
in his middle-class ears, and he your
abuser, dead now, probably for years.