ADDICT

"maybe the people who come to you can handle your darkness"

said someone to me this week. a friend. i say to myself things like

"only broken people come to you, you attract damage"  forget perception

forget we paint the moment we are in with the brush of the past

and it colors everything with what was, not what is

i went to a presentation on healing from sexual trauma

and listened to a room full of women, are you surprised it was

a room full of women but of course we are

my brother was sexually abused and now he is dead

i cry in the bathtub because last week i was having sex

with someone who loves me and who i love but

we can't be together so now i am alone again

it hurts: i go online and in ten minutes find a stranger

to fill that emptiness, fix it: My deepest wound is invisibility

no one can see me and that is how abuse gets in

no one can see me and so too i think of ways to be seen

no matter the cost: i listen to a radio interview with a therapist

on sex addiction and she talks about volition, about whether one

in the moment dissociates and can even make a conscious choice

so tell me how consent works when all i know is other people's bodies

are a way to danger, cloaking what i am worth i seduce abuse b/c i

am in love with the way it consistently wants me back

i don't have to wonder: you love me like you want me dead, you love

me like i'm not real, you love me like i don't exist at all

and yes, i say yes and yes and yes: it's all bloomed inside me

first kiss to fist