There Is Nothing Fluffy About This Story, Baby Poem by Sarita Brown

but what he knew that no one knew was the wailing
the wailing in my heart where someone
had put out a cigarette and spit.

he saw it all.

if you wonder why he didn't stop it, well,
me too.

but there were lots of people who were supposed to stop
it, people that he left in charge and they couldn't
and they wouldn't and i wanted nothing more than for it to stop
and it never did.

not even years after it was over.

like so many.
he was there for those too.
and inside his blazing heart there is a scar
that runs the length and depth of it.

Now he shows me how to pass my hand over
all the blood and burned bits to turn it gold and amber
to rinse the wound with some acidic forgiveness

I add a bottle of jack daniels on the bad days.
on the good days i tell the stories of the others
who are still bleeding, who are waiting for someone
to stop it.
i join hands,
we are making progress.

Vicarious abuse,
is what the experts call it
when you are forced to watch someone else's
bad scene.

he has a hummer full of tapes and i tell
you the truth,
(i saw it with my own eyes)
he is there in
each grisly frame crying, hurting.

when they cut me,
he bled out.
but still?
He came for me later.

that is why i am on this bike.
he has taken the road before and
he knows dirt.
he wants to show me the real world
from the ground up.
correct some misconceptions about
his story which is not ready for publication
yet

(we write together in the dark, over and over
the words which cannot be contained
on tablets of stone, we whisper the one
two three of us
the way there is no going back now
the twigs digging into our backs in the dark.) .

Did you know?
he writes on my heart
with laserbeams
and tears
it might be painful, but it is beautiful
and has colors that make you weep.
unlike the story his family made up in his absence,
its a version i can
live with.)