Assimilation

You were forced to submit so

You revised the primal scene

Muffled the internal scream

You remembered it differently

            You must have

                        Wanted it,

            You must have

                        Asked for it

In this way you kept yourself together

Maintained control

Kept your face from reflecting the shattering inside

Success kept you from trusting yourself

Trusting how you record,

How you see.

The last boyfriend said you gave off mixed messages

Ran hot and cold

Beauty and Beast

Madonna Virgin Whore

It must be hard to be an attractive woman

With a brain, he said. And you said

With an ironic smirk

Yes, it’s a real bitch. As you mixed another

Extra dry martini and slipped

Into his lap like a pretty lap dog

With a pedigree.

Pretty is a cursed blessing.

It is what

            Yebba yebba

He was chanting as he entered

Your mute and trembling

Five year old body

It is what you didn’t want.

It is what you wanted.

So now with perfect posture

Some twenty years later

You want a man to tell you

You are pretty, pretty, pretty

As he strokes your hair

And traces down the length of your neck

It makes you hate yourself

Because inside

Of course you

Don’t want it

Didn’t want it

How could you?

Your grandmother

Knew what was happening

Told your parents

Who asked you

And you lied

Betraying her

The way he betrayed you.

When it is in the family

You cannot speak it

To speak it

Would be

To make the shame real

To give it body

It doesn’t deserve.

But the silence

Made you

Phantom

Conditional

Un-present

At the point of shattering

You were caught in emotional deep freeze

No warm lips could kiss you

Out of the ice glass coffin

That was your body

Your face

The words you mouthed

The gestures you pantomimed

You walked the pretense

Numb, unseeing, dead

We walked together, you and I

Unable to face each other

Unwilling to free

The warm blue thing rattling

Inside our cages of sharp bone and

Slowly rotting meat

Not daring.


© Jane Park


Published in Experiments in a Jazz Aesthetic: Art, Activism, Academia and The Austin Project, edited by Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, Lisa L. Moore, and Sharon Bridgforth (University of Texas Press, 2010).