Sometimes I wish she never did what she did,
Didn’t cut me up into pieces of flesh,
Didn’t leave me out, so vermin could come take a bite,
Mould me, annihilate me, strip me,
Take me in turns, steal my arm, my eyes, my legs, my freedom
I want to take it all back,
The time she took, every second she stole,
Every word she took from my mouth, banishing it out of existence,
every capillary she burst when beating,
The ocean of adrenaline she pumped in to me, I want to be rid of imbalance, ,
My shoulders hooded from protecting me from the punches, I want my posture back
I want freedom for my knees and feet, bent inwards, told that I didn’t walk straight,
I want my skin back, it was not my own, had to cover it through hot and cold,
I want my grief back, my dad’s funeral taken from me, because there were too many men that could’ve seen my face,
I want my satiation back,
My body always hungry, never satisfied, you starved me for years, I want normal eating patterns back,
At college I would google food just to know what I was missing out on, wondering why everyone else’s plates were full, mine always empty,
Plates always broken, I started to smash glasses,
I want the fat on my bones back, you took ten kilos off me,
I want you to take back the hernia, want you to stop beating at my lungs for it,
Now it’s gone into hiatus, hiding behind my diaphragm then moving,
I want my adrenal glands to be back, want it to produce healthy fear,
Yet I cannot stop hiding,
I want to be rid of the memory, my muscles hold it all, carry every word spoken unto me,
My unconscious, my subconscious I need it, you plague every blinking moment,
Even when I am not, when I am in deep sleep you come haunt me,
I want my eggs in my ovaries back, I want my endometrium back,
Yet you burnt it alive, all these emotions, feeding it pain,
My burnt sexuality, my frustrations I wish it all back,
Instead it scarred me, now I can’t even hold my own,
Can’t even make love for the mere screams of you and every other parent in this family scarred into my head,
I want to be rid of birth pain, every breathing moment. carrying boulders in my womb,
Want to free my womb, she has endured so much, so soon, thought it was to burn all my sins,
But what sin can a 13 year old commit?
I want to be rid of this mountain of grief in my eyes, always observing, just loitering in the background, this whirlpool of pain,
I want to feel my body again, want to know what healthy is back,
I wish to know what it feels like to be loved by a mother, to be loved by adults, to know what family is,
Will there ever be safety for me? Must I always have to prepare myself to see family,
Spend month overcoming the trauma on such a greeting, I want to return all the passive aggression, manipulation, rules, curses, want to return the cursed culture, want to give it all back,
I want to feel rest, rest in my soul, want to know what it feels like to not always intrinsically fight,
Fighting to breathe, fighting to live, fighting to survive, want to stop fighting
I want to burn my room down, want to set the walls on fire, you made it my jail cell, fuck,I wish to burn the house down, a house trapped in trauma, it’s walls strung in depression, painted in the whispers and prayers I sung as a child for God to come save me, for my family to save me, for the neighbors to hear and for the police to come and save,
Yet I could not leave, even as an adult, the adults won’t let me leave,
Threats upon threats,
I want my childhood back, wish to be run in shorts, wish to smile and laugh, not out of fear, open my mouth with all teeeth showing,
want the girl in me to come out,
I wish you never burnt Pakistan out of me, took the Urdu out of me, wanted me to be English,
Yet you then changed your mind half way , began plastering expectations of tradition,
I want my education back, I hated school because of you, forced me to memorise,
You can take it all back, take the schooling system back,
Take back this ingrained idea that I am dumb, that I am not good enough,
I cannot get it out of my head, even working now I never feel good, I hate it,
Now I seek approval everywhere, just a nod or a yes, to ensure I am doing fine
You took the joy of education out of me, you stole art out of my hands as a child,
Could you bring back the time? You stole so much time of mine,
Will you build the wilderness back into me, will you carve back my brain so it can adjust to normality,
My skin yearning for sun, I want presence in my body back, you took its fluidity, you stole my right to be here, now even my breath struggles to stay in this vessel I call mine,
I feel uncomfortable within my skin, never fully here, just floating, waiting for the trumpet to call, for my time to call,
Melanin you snipered away, threw out any individuality, any cause for a sin, instead I wore men’s clothes for years,
I want my breasts back, never wore a bra until so late on, so late that now i despise them,
And you wonder why I don’t wear them,
I want my skin to unhear all that you said to it, at 6,10,16,18,20,23 years old, whore, prostitute, slut, slag were all that you spoke upon me,
How many years will it take to undo the heinous crime of cursing my body,
My tongue infected with curses now, its as if I have Tourettes.
Will you ever ask God for forgiveness ?
I want to banish the loneliness, this inbred nature of being fully faceted but alone,
Knowing that I have no one that understands or wants to understand why you did what you did,
I wonder often how long it will take to overcome 15 years of abuse?
When I can be at peace?
Most of the time I wish to blur out of this world,
How much of my time you took from me, stole,
Everything feels heavy all the time,
I struggle to explain what happened to me, instead I stay mute, I continue,
I do this while smiling,
I want to take my time back, want to take back my health
After hell they said there was heaven,
But it seems my hell keeps burning,
I want it to stop.