This is How a Poem Comes to Life by @cstreetlights

I’m honored to have Gravity Imprint author C. Streetlights here today with us to share her story. Look for C’s amazing book, Tea and Madness, out now!

I never told anyone the specifics of what had happened the fall of 1996 when I was raped. Not because I am ashamed but because I didn’t think it mattered. In the fall of 1996 I was a 19-year-old living with my sister and attending a university as a junior. I walked to campus for classes, back home for schoolwork, and would hang out with my brother and his family on the weekends. I was carrying a heavy load of credits so that I could enter the teaching program the next semester and didn’t have time for a robust social life.

My sister and I shared a bedroom while a roommate rented out my sister’s extra bedroom. This roommate introduced me to MASH, shepherd’s pie, and by a twist of fate, my rapist.

[share ]Nobody is to blame but him.[/share]

I have walked alongside the memory of that night – never fully forgetting and not ever accepting – as I have aged, its shadow tripping my footsteps. “The Trespasser,” a poem from my new memoir Tea and Madness, came from the image I had of my uninvited shadow constantly following me regardless of where I traveled. This is one of the many unspoken realities of surviving rape: not only do we survive the violation itself, but we then endure the lifetime violation of dreams, memories, and personal identities.

“I’ll wait,”

you said, then walked in.

And I,

not knowing what that meant,

watched you take a seat.

I first conceptualized “The Trespasser” to be a more symbolic or abstract poem, a personification of Rape itself and its effects on a woman as she moves from victim to a survivor.

And I

never knew what these words would mean

to me.

The more I wrote the more contrived the words became. It was probably the worst string of words I had ever put together. It was my own truth that fought with me to finally come to life. It was the fall of 1996 again and all the unnecessary details I never felt were important demanded light.

And I

shouted “Stop!” at the hands

on me.

When the words were finished shouting all at once at me and I caught up to the erratic rhythm of the poem (apologies to my high school English teacher who would beat rhythm into me if she could catch me), I cried.

I cried.

I stood in scalding hot water,

washing you off of me.

You

went down the drain.

I

went down the drain.

Someone once asked me why I like “to do weird things with pronouns” in my writing and this style choice is evident in “The Trespasser.” I do this “weird thing” because pronouns are important, because they replace the antecedent.

Now,

there is no you to me.

Now,

there is just me

to I.

The person who moved in with her sister died the moment that man walked through the door. I died in ways I couldn’t understand that night and am still learning to understand now at almost 40-years-old. The world I lived in metamorphosed into Kafka’s cockroach [1] and poor Gregor died in his sleep. [share ]One person died but another came to be[/share]. One world collapsed while another was created from matter unorganized.

It will soon be twenty years since the fall of 1996. Still I travel with a shadow, but it begins to fall behind the more I acknowledge it. Soon it will disappear altogether. Not from being forgotten but from the sun finally setting on it.

I will not miss it.

 

About the Author:
After writing and illustrating her first bestseller in second grade, “The Lovely Unicorn”, C. Streetlights took twenty years to decide if she wanted to continue writing. In the time known as growing up she became a teacher, a wife, and mother. Retired from teaching, C. Streetlights now lives with her family in the mountains along with their dog that eats Kleenex. Her new memoir, Tea and Madness is now available.

You can follow C. Streetlights on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Goodreads.

[1] Gregor Samsa, in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphis, wakes up transformed into a large insect – commonly inferred to be a cockroach.

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Pictures courtesy of Unsplash, C Streetlights, and Booktrope