Can We Talk

I know we’ve been through some things
pooped pampers to periods.
Heart breaks to engagement rings.
So can we talk?

Mom, I think if our walls could talk,
They’d scream.
Not about your curry soup
About my brothers being arrested,
and their flying the coup.

I don’t want to converse about sex.
It’s too late.
You couldn’t imagine your daughter,
in the back seat of a cherry red Honda;
Head tilted back, eyes closed
legs elevated, with toes pointed like a ballerina
sweat dripping down my brow.

But I do have things I want to say,
My back bent in like a ditch,
puddles settle in, making me laggard,
Overflowing like an erupted volcano,
So can we talk?

About that day you read my soul
like a blind man reads brail
your fingertips poking at my spirit.
Sssssshhhh,
Listen!

That was my floral book of secrets,
but you unraveled me like a gift,
bow and all.

We never spoke
about it,
the aftermath of your actions.
A gray cloud still hangs over my head,
from the raging storm.
I cried like an abandoned infant.
You never held me.

You should know,
that you
put me through hell.

I was only fifteen
My legs spread on a stranger’s icicle table,
violated,
heavier than shackles of slaves
her seal like hands held down my thighs
pinned down and penetrated.
You let her rape me.

When it was done,
she stood twenty feet tall
looking at who she labeled slut.
BUT
that DOCTOR,
Was my first.

Talk to me!
Tell me why we never shared our feelings.
Please,
can we talk?

©copyright Tia L. Clarke 2007