he bought my innocent time

with promises of candy and wine

but when i opened my eyes,

i learned that those were just lies

for him to feel my underaged insides.

fourteen years old, in chicago,

when i ran out into the february frost.

i collapsed, then decorated the street

with this agony i refused to accept.

and this, the trauma that i could not eat.

there, beneath the famous lights of wrigley field,

i cried until my tattoo tears

erased the sparkle from my eyes,

unable to survive after learning

that the world could also be like this.

the vicious, windy city won this wicked war,

burying me alive that night, without a fight.

it threw the ashes of my adolescence

in the air, like criminal confetti.

it stripped away my security,

to soak me in my own sorrow.

i crawled into the cocoon inside my head.

remaining here in this self-induced coma

until i'd shed the sympathy-stained skin

of being a victim.

i REFUSE to be anything but resilient.

still, no butterfly should ever have to

suffer through abuse in order for its own

metamorphosis to occur.