Trigger

Trigger

I never knew what it meant

Thought it might disorient

Or push on the strings

Of your heart’s wings

Never knowing a trigger could break your feathers

Pushed down by all the pressures

Not knowing it could have the words echoing like a broken record player

Wishing you could shield yourself with a solid layer

The echoing word was rape

Left me nowhere to escape

I was fine, told myself a thousand times

Thought it would echo over everyone’s most gossiped about crimes

Shielded face and muted words, let myself sink

Felt myself shiver, break and shrink

Felt myself become so detached

I reattached myself to the scratched

And the forced forgotten

His smile, his eyes, his rotten

Are you okay?

Losing my airway,

And felt the too nostalgic rocks return

Heavier than heartburn

Tore myself away, left the room

Classroom shut up in a boom

Silently yelling out the untold

Outside was quiet, alone, cold

My breath as visible as the tears under my eyes

Staring at the skies, begging god for a reprise

I never chose for panic attacks

And to be the stereotype for the sad acts

Feel like a cliché in my own narrative

A thirteen reasons comparative

A poster for the definition of consent winning at a staring contest

Forcing the crash of the suppressed

Finally undressed

My truths lying on the floor

Broken at the chore

Like autumn leaves

I scattered them in heaves

My brown boots crushing the crack that kept them going

All the while knowing

That brown rotten leaves disappear

They don’t have to persevere next year

Truth like that doesn’t have wings

They’re blown around by the wind until April Springs

and my trigger would last longer than seasonal hurricanes

my truth living in my veins

no escaping the trigger of my own truth

a reminder of stolen youth