Days Like Today

This body 

It's never been mine

He took it

I was eight years old

I know his hands

And I know his skin

I know I was standing up

My young and weak knees bent and his 

Grown arms hooked behind my back

My back did not know how to carry the

Weight of this burden

So I hid it in my gut

With the bread and butter and the

Things I didn't know how to feel

And so I grew and weighed twice my older 

Brothers weight

And I still held the sickness in my stomach

So I stuck my rounded fingers down my throat

Hoping

Praying

The sickness would leave

But it was just food-

It's always been just food. 

And after 17 months and 82 pounds ess

I still felt it in my gut

It still clung to the walls of my stomach

It had sewn itself into the skin of my uterus

Almost a decade has passed 

And on some days

Days like today

I can't bear to look at the sky

Because the clouds are the same

As the day I was touched against my will

By a grown man with a whiskey tongue,

Calloused hands, and a wicked smile

And though I'm older and the burden has

Eroded like sand paper on fossil figures

And I can eat a salad and feel good about myself

I still can't look at the clouds,

Not on days like today.