EMDR / Dean Lyrics

Turns out, our bodies are computers

And in EMDR, trauma was explained to me as an event that overwhelms our senses

So much so, that our brains don't know how to store it

Cannot file it away, so it hovers in our energy, stagnant

A lost document

So it went

Southern California, five years old in gymnastics

My instructor Dean asked me to stay after class

Your head

My lap

Other way

Take a nap

No one will love you if you cry like that

My skin scratched bright red, but he thought I'd comply

But even at five, I had the same hurricane mind, electricity mouth, veins made of lightning

A girl turned burning house

He doused my young body in its first taste of trauma, crumpled my childhood and set it on fire

A popsicle

We'll make it better

Was it banana

Or cherry

I can't fucking remember

So clumsy

A slide

Fell off

Small incident today

No need to worry

They looked

Didn't see me

More hide

Less seek

I think the light is leaving

While the other kids sat rosy-cheeked and laughing, I sat in a corner spelling out sexual words in graham cracker lettering

My soul screaming out sonnets with paper and pen

I think the darkness cracked something in me open

How could they not have noticed

Those adults were in charge of children, the most vulnerable of our society

So I built my vocabulary bigger than the list of names who failed me

My brain an overheated battery trying to sort out what the flashbacks mean

System overload

My mind shut off in an effort to protect me

Bits and pieces of the scene kept me up at night with all the flashing

Four ceiling tiles

Two beads of sweat

Trauma's funny like that

The details it lets you remember in the main event it forces you to forget

I started screaming into pillows when I was alone and I didn't know why

Overflowing my plate five times over at dinner

Trying to fill up this crater inside

I prayed the rosary

Twice

Was still drenched in a sin

Even when the church opens its doors I refuse to walk in

And I still don't know what makes a soul worth saving

And after being cracked so many times it's no wonder we split open

And when I write poems like these I don't know the right spots to put line breaks in

Because everything at once feels like it's breaking

Now I don't sing acapella

Or cry in front of people

When community knocks on my door I can't bring myself to answer it

Ever since he poured his perversion in a cup and forced me to sip

I don't know how to navigate relationships without manipulation

I start to worry about the burn soon as sunlight hits my skin

I remember being in the shower

Meticulously shaving every ounce of human off of me

One day refusing to be touched

The next, hypersexuality

On a scale of one to ten how disturbing is the memory

Well, I would say that it's a ten

For twenty-seven years I felt his hands on every inch of me

Now I wake in the middle of the night

Drenched in sweat

My lovers have told me I fly up in bed in a panic

In the morning my jaw aches

I have to unclench my fists

Now I'm torn between contemplating the weight of accusation and remembering that scar on your chin

And how many more years have you taught at that gym

How many more girls have you done this to

Dean, is it five

Is it ten

After my first EMDR session some of the details still lacked

But no one ever warned me the rage would be the first thing to come back

I swear to God I could drown a whole ocean with it

But how could I not

With those screaming images arriving in flashes

My hips not yet formed

No baby teeth falling out yet

I guess the way I balanced on a beam stirred up your sick sense of pleasure

The younger the girl, the higher the chance she won't remember

But this is what happens when you fuck with a writer

My brain is precise

I memorize six minute poems by the hour

I've come back for you now

Pure hellfire and literature

And did you think you actually stood a chance against my power

As if the ground did not rattle upon my arrival

As if the oceans did not storm in anticipation of the hurricane I will rain down upon you

As I rise up and crash down like the waves

You left me outside in the rain

Like a tattered sheet hung up to dry

But just like Maya Angelou still I rise

And my poems are coming for you

I flew back to California

Healing in hand

Went straight to that gym

And walked my ass in

And I swear on everything holy

You will never lay your hands on a child again

Well Dean

Now that this poem is quickly approaching part two

I kindly request that you look me in the fucking eyes when I'm speaking to you

20 minutes

20 years ago

Tell me

What's the value

And since no one ever told you

When a person says no

That in itself is a complete answer

Zero explanation is required to follow

But I guess that's what happens when you feed blood to a monster

You would think it would change him

But it just makes him grow stronger

So if being beautiful means beaten and bruised

I don't want it

I will cut all my hair off

I will scrub off this makeup

We are conditioned in society based on faulty mathematics

The church of her body set on fire by five different arsonists

And the only thing that we question is how flammable her fabric is

The clothes are not the problem

Did you know that only 23% of sexual assaults go reported a year

Has me thinking that the shame lies not in the women silenced

But in the male privilege that silenced her

When flames devour your skin

There's no question if the burning is real

So I vow to pull poems out of ashes

Until there is nothing left for me to heal

And I've made it a habit of lifting weights at the gym

Vowing that if a man ever tried to hurt me in that way again

He would walk away bleeding

So please

Someone just tell me what I'm needing to do to heal

And I'll do it

I will plant gardens in my throat

Water them with the art that I wrote when they're dry

Abracadabra

What potion do I swallow to make my insides a calm sky

How much my center sees sunlight if my ribcage is windowless

And I've been thinking a lot lately about the human heart

And it's capacity for forgiveness

And I know in the future I will arrive at that place

But to be honest that day hasn't come yet

And I've always longed to speak with Rubik's cube lips

But I'm all Ernest Hemingway

Sprawling my blatancy on the table saying here

All I have is this

And I don't know why the tears come to me some days

Maybe they are a part of me now

But if the rumors are true

If there's something in the water

I wouldn't believe that rivers could drown

Purity is found inside of a heart

It does not live in a body

And it has taken me years to understand that it is not something he ever could have stolen from me

So I vow to be gentle with myself as my mind starts rewiring

I'm ready to change the channel away from this endless loop of a memory

Turns out I'm not American honey

I did not grow up so

Maybe innocence isn't real

Maybe it never was but

I have a spine made of iron and one hell of a soul

And while I can't say what peace feels like

I won't rest till I know

So maybe that's why I find solace in poems

These college-ruled pages are the closest I've ever had to a home

Could a person still love me when these lines run like rivers and all that's left is my soul

Maybe that's why I put off therapy all these years

Could I still be interesting even when I am whole

Turns out our bodies are computers

And in EMDR it was explained to me that in order for our brains to process the trauma

Our minds need to update our systems

Toss out our old patterns

Switch out our camera lens

So I've begun to view this pain as an honor

I rewrote my role in this story from victim to warrior

And maybe God, whatever he, she, or it is

Gives these experiences to the ones that are not only strong enough to handle it

But have the ability to do something about it for all of us

Isn't that love

Isn't that love

This morning I stood in the grocery store aisle

Wondering if the bright sky blend of coffee might finally be the right fit for me

Before a man passed

He asked if anyone had reminded me I was beautiful that day

Well quite frankly sir

I've been told that my entire life

But hadn't felt it till yesterday

Little by little I found myself coming back

Each therapy session chips away at my writer's block

And in the midst of relearning what I am and am not

I found stillness in storms

Despite all that I've lost

And it's safe to say I found my life's work

Building stained glass windows from the shards of my hurt

The deeper the pain the better the poem

So trust me Dean

There's a hundred more where this came from

Turns out

Our bodies are computers

Just waiting for our brains to update our systems

Amazing grace

How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost

But now I'm found

It's twenty years later

And I am safe now