Ode to The Tainted

By Joi Anglade, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

CONTENT WARNING: Mentions of physical and sexual abuse

YOU

  You were not perfect.  Disoriented at sea without a captain.  How

could you have known that life was rife with temptation

  and smiling devils who twirl their long, black hair.  In my keenest memory, I have 

  seen you devour a fifth of Gordon.  Who would’ve known you could be so loud?

  Loud enough to make the hair on my neck stand up and throw me onto the

  ground.  If I’d known how hard you would hit, I would’ve shrunken into my shoulders 

  and melted on the couch until I dripped between the crevices.  

  Vanished.

  While you pummeled my face and named me “slut”, I floated away to have dinner

  with an angel.  She served; Warmth.  Pain.  Tears.  Her caress protected me 

  like a turtle shell until you were done with your fury.  

  Our dinner ends and the swelling begins.

  I study your steep,

  vicious face-beads of sweat glisten on your forehead, hate rests peacefully on your brow.

  You slept, I cried.  Good night.

   HER 

   Her heart and mind will never be the same.  Her innocence disappears faster than

   a five dollar bill in Crackhead Tisha’s hands.  

   Polluted.  She is all but lost.  She is all but found.   

   Now, her pain has an appetite that cannot be satisfied.  It must be fed, she must 

   be hurt.  

   She thinks pain is passion as she gazes into the green eyes of Darren

   who changed her name to “bitch” and chokes her for his manhood.  The harder the 

   B, the tighter the grasp, the better the sex.  This is what love is.  Apple doesn’t fall

   far from the tree?  Or was it the snake?  It came back and bit her, injecting her with

   poison, which made her dream that Uncle Vermont called her “sexy” and tried to plant his

   drunken, wet lips on her mouth while insisting that she run away with him. 

   Her mother says she will never talk to him again.   

   She paid close attention, but these lessons caused her 

   to fail the test.

   I

   I do not hate you; any one of you.  Not even the ones who mounted my listless body while I was

   unconscious.  Or the ones that stole my jewelry and my dignity and sat down at my table to eat my heart 

   with a smile.  

   Not even the one who falsely fucked with my freedom.  I knew it was simply love you wished to show me.

   Like the one with the drugs.  I wanted to be free

   and you gave me an endless supply. 

   I died.

   And woke up with a gun to my head.  You told me you would kill me.  I offered my whole self 

   with a hopeless grin and hopeful spirit.

   Curvy figures and wet confines lead to bloody noses and broken bones.

   And souls.

   Perfect strokes and full pockets create fragility and obsession.

   The one who broke my heart a hundred ways and gored my body through the middle until 

   my chest was 

   exposed 

   speaks to me at times with the breath of a fire dragon, angry and spicy.  

   Sharp and tough.

   I’ll walk on stage and sing my melancholy ballad until it sounds 

   like happiness.

   That is when I’ll know, the lessons I have learned were a fool’s.