You Are Not Alone

you are not alone
there’s one who was manipulated,
they played with his weaknesses,
they toyed with his crack.

another was never heard,
they told him to stop thinking about it,
that the page would turn on its own.

and then another was told
to make a man of himself,
to move on,
to get over it.

another spent his life in the shadows,
and yet another
spent his life beside his life.

and then one more was told
to just go to bed.

and then another,
and then another,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

you are not alone.

You’ve seen the whole range of reactions (absolutely),
from denial to offering help?

“From denial to offering help,
and I’d say right now
it’s more like a kind of generalized denial.

Like, you know, when I try to bring it up,
I just hit a closed door.
But I think that reaction,
I think it’s coming from love,
‘cause, like, I’m in this state of dissociation,
and talking about it would, I don’t know,
it would break me.

In other words,
I think my parents still love me.
I think they’re trying to protect me with this,
like, it’s not necessarily about
protecting themselves.”

few poets have spoken of what you’ve been through
many more novelists, I imagine—
it makes for “good” stories,
touching, moving, heartbreaking.
we close the book with emotion,
turn off the light in indignation,
and sleep swallows us whole.

in truth, what you’ve been through,
few know how to put it into words—
it unsettles them.
what you’ve been through,
and still live through,
remains, for many, unnameable.

and even my poetry,
so talkative in other circumstances,
seems wordless here—
unable to speak of it as it should,
with simple words,
honest words,
words of luminous clarity,
a clarity finally able to express,
to bring into the light,
the unspeakable,
the hard to say.

I cannot, of course, speak
of another’s pain without retracing,
within myself, this uneven path,
this trail of intimate suffering
that so often leaves me voiceless.

it sways, it shakes,
and I choke.
I pick up again, despite myself,
the heavy burden of my isolation,
shouldering it as it wavers,
trips me up,
strikes me down—
and I fall, unraveling inward
like a child who frays at the seams
and, in the end,
grows up crooked.

I put myself in your place,
I step into your skin,
I walk through the city,
through life.
I walk sideways,
searching for my words—
each of my steps feels like a needle
trying to stitch,
with the long thread of days,
something like a false bottom to the horizon,
trying to seal
something like a wound.

I try to close whole chapters,
all haunted by silences.
in searching for my words,
I search for a way to untie speech.
I search for someone to hear it,
someone to
receive it.

“I know that when my dad,
he used to drink
when he was younger, and
from what I’ve heard,
he had some pretty extreme behavior
when he was drinking,
when he was using like that.

I also know my grandparents
carried some pretty heavy baggage,
like they had their own family issues,
on my dad’s side
and on my mom’s side,
both sides, really.

So, yeah, they had
their own traumatic baggage,
you know,
from both
sides.”

From shame to hate,
a factory line of pain,
where every link is trapped,
then turns,
an infernal mechanism:
a broken childhood,
a factory of shame,
and every man for himself.
Suffering in silence,
but the heart beats still.

The heart beats still,
and the heart doesn’t beat alone,
just as you are not alone.
There are even a few of you,
many, silent.

Speak to each other.
Speak to us.

We are listening.

I know this—
this story,
this thing,
it often feels dark,
a black, monstrous weight,
an anvil lodged in your chest,
a fist in your gut,
and it falters inside us,
as it often does.
I know all of that,
but I also know the heart beats still.

You can’t erase anything
without erasing yourself.
It’s better to take yourself back,
right where you were left,
in your body.
Yes, take yourself back,
and learn to breathe again,
because the heart beats still.

The heart—
it’s a cliché to say it—
is life.
The heart—
it’s another cliché to say it—
is shaped like a clenched fist,
a fist that only wants to open.