Challenge
Challenge of the Month XXXIX
Write a short poem about your own private Hell. The tortured who reigns gets 100 big ones. Winner will be picked by Prose. Go.
Virginitiphobia
Deep red between the covers
like a book, except
no comforter in sight, and
I didn’t choose this
storyline – less adventure,
more memoir of a
psychological horror.
I don’t remember
which nightgown he tore off me,
but I remember
the body he took from me
when I was just four;
I remember the knife he
pressed up to my throat –
the scar it left is still there,
burning, choking me,
keeping me quiet like his
hand over my mouth,
Daddy saying “if you tell,
I’ll skin you alive.”
So he returns to that bed,
with his stiff body
and his heavy knife, that night
and each night after.
The will to fight or cry leaves,
the body lay still,
frozen, numb, hoping, praying,
the knife goes deeper
into your esophagus –
Finally, voided,
surrendered to the silence.
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