Her Urban Nightmare - WEP Challenge June 2020

The city, 

  walls high,

    no heart,

      no light.

It squeezed in upon her like the darkness at night,

leaving her breathless, wanting to run.

But where to?

...Wasn’t it her need for fun,

her own fault that she was here?

Didn’t she take that guy’s offer, of her first beer?

A better place, a fuller life, more money, more things, more…?

More strife she hadn’t expected.

More pain not anticipated.

More being rejected.

A life unexpected.

No, 

    not life at all.

Fourteen!

She was FOURTEEN when she ran away. 

But her life ended, that fateful day. 

So much ahead of her, so much to see, 

but her innocent heart just ceased to be.

Naive some would say - but shouldn’t one be? 

What worldly wisdom did they expect of me? 

I was just a child, barely a teenager, 

But what did they care, the men, the monsters of danger,

It’s been 5 years now, or is it ten?

I stopped the counting, I don’t know when

 - but I think it was day one thousand and ten. 

No need to continue, no use to escape…

Yet another abuse, another rape,

another body another whim,

another, another, another, …him.

They just keep cumming, pun intended

- So why resist when my heart is rended?

Escape... somewhere in my mind.

A family holiday with people, kind.

A tiny puppy, a walk on a beach.

A school sport’s day - other things out of reach.

But, recently I've seen the flaws,

The film a-slipping, the stuttering, the pause,

the colours washed out, the reality faded,

the memories drifting, the enjoyment jaded.

So where to now I'm asking self?

I must escape or kill myself.

If my mind is gone then I am doomed…

I’m stuck in this room, on this bed entombed.

So I empty my head of all thoughts real

and pull inwards, withdraw, to where I cannot feel.

 

That’s better… 

Higher Daddy, higher and free,

yes that’s me in a memory.

I love it, the flying, the joy, the dying….

NO!

   Stay there in the air without a care.

      Careful, you're sliding, the scene is...bike riding -

Is that mine or my brother’s?

My mother is there with wonderful patience

her laughter bubbling, so contagious.

The tears slip out unabashed

and suddenly she knows that she hasn’t been trashed.

Where is Mama? “Mama! Mama! Mama!”

She’s screaming now and the thug comes in

to inject a shot of adrenaline.

...Whee, that’s great, the Helter-skelter.

Almost as good as the welcome shelter

Where she got warm food and a roof that night,

the one when she had taken flight

- But they sought her out and they dragged her back...

So here she lies, pumped full of crack.

 

And she stares at the ceiling, her eyes straight ahead 

As he empties his pleasures in her body half dead. 

But there’s the window, the city, the walls. 

No heart, no light, but freedom it calls.

She must not give up she must concentrate 

and plan the day when she might escape

… Escape her perpetual urban nightmare.

Are there angels waiting there?

 

Carole Stolz © 2020 

(525 words)