Remembering Jessica

Remembering Jessica

"A spoken word poem dedicated to all women who have suffered from rape or sexual abuse. "

Spoken Word by Anthony Anaxagorou

(Ida's transcript)

We loved once
before time opened her story to me
asking me for my silence
could maybe take her in for a while
under the weight of her words we kissed and I planted a promise on her heart
each finger gripping mine like 'I'm scared keep me safe', she said.

Because tonight she wanted to tell me about
those with swords 

Her eyes falling away from mine like a lost wave
saying goodbye from some bigger distance
or a pain that I couldn't touch with a million fingers
because it was made by fire

I told her she didn't have to tell me if she didn't want to
and she said "are you scared?"
I said 'I don't know'
and there's nothing more frightening than that.

Rising from the bed she fixed her gaze onto a lonely streetlight outside
and put a flame to her last cigarette

Those with swords

I remember those plastic eyes hiding behind the thick smoke of his long spliff
I wanted them so much to cry with me
to weep for as long as I did
but in the dark, all sadness is hidden

my room was a cage of nightmares
my sheets were dead virgins
and it didn't stop - it couldn't stop
because it felt good only when I felt bad
and I remember smashing my head against the picture of when I was six
only because then I was pure
and the way the blood sat over the clear glass made the picture so fucking real.

Some nights he would tell me how amazing I was.
he would kiss my breasts that weren't breast
he would run his body over mine as if plowing through a garden of dead flowers
he would say 'we're the bestest friends' while he was helping me to put my lion king pajamas back on
then he would place a doll to my chest
to keep the monsters away...

It was alcohol and cigarettes that became my world
as each time he pushed his mouth against mine I would breath in their spirit, engendering the words that later would sound like 'I need a hit', 'how much for the night?' and 'yes you can fuck me, but please hold me after'.

You understand now why I always wanted the sex to be hard,
because I needed to be punished.
Punished for the silence I kept between my teeth, under my tongue and in my dreams.
Punished for all the times I let him rupture me.
Keeping his sickness a prisoner to my womb because when his finger went inside me - they would always pull something back out.
Like a smile. A leap. A childhood.

'When did it stop?' I asked.

She picked up a piece of the broken moon and held it to her eye.

When I got in a car for the first time I was twelve years old in a sidestreet where piss streaks ran down the side of walls smug-like 'you're a long way from disney land, sweetheart'.

There was no 'how old are you?' 'have you eaten?' 'where you raped as a child?' only him again.

When I smoked my first joint I was twelve years old.
I felt the air became his hands reaching in to my throat.
His stubble rubbing up against me until my skin turned hard.
I saw him again.
And when a stranger beat me I just layed there.
The old sound of knuckle on bone.
The mad eyes, the anger.
I understood everything so I didn't flinch.
I just smiled as the blood from my nose ran against my lipstick, and I kissed him. Waiting. As I always did. For a doll to be placed against my heart.

After all this I found a soul to love at twenty three.
A man who would write my story in the only way he could.
Setting pictures in the minds of strangers of a girl, who by the time she would reach twenty four would inject enough heroin into her fragile body that it would have killed her three times over.
Dying forgetfully in nobody's room because the man telling this story broke her for the last time with the weight of his good bye
and I'm sorry 
I can't do this anymore.

I was buried gently on no perticular day in a place of earth and rain
with a doll
placed close against my heart
to keep the monsters away.