My first husband, early 1991

If he couldn't have me nobody would.  He said he should kill me, as the knife dug harder and harder against my neck.  And that was just for speaking.  I didn't breathe for four hours as the proverbial mockery ensued.  We stood, we sat, we stood some more; there was a lot of hair pulling.  Lots of calling me pretty.  Lots of wishing for blood.  Lots of seconds of silence.  We stood there like that, him having had his own neck gashed open just a few years before in some Georgia bar; more than a hundred stitches with last rights read – more than once I might add.   The man that cut his gullet – cut his own thumb in the process; he was HIV positive and now they’re both dead.   My first husband was raised by one of them crazy fuck’rds, that went around hollering god sent AIDS to free the world of gays.   Give me another metaphor for the lamb born restless and slaughtered.  

I live and I love,
I give, and I give in;  
an outer street lamp
threw a pale glare,
I broke in the angle,

seconds is all you have,

one blink and you’re dead
he lay there wilted,
crying, begging, clinching
a bloody tooth in his fist;
I lay that lion out like a bitch.

Author's Notes:  He was gilded in those moments of my silence as he was breathing arrogance and religion in my ear.  I didn't pray to him or anyone else.  I was thinking I wanted to live, and I was just biding my time until there was nothing left to give – it was familiar.  The same things happen to us over and over in our lives until quitting time; the fights unfair and it always will be.  Find your strength, use your mind, and break the chain. It takes strength to do that.   It takes courage to write about it.

I don't think that this story is anything out of the ordinary from what I know that others have lived through.  But I am grateful to be alive.  For me its only one event out of a million shards that has taken me forever to piece together, in that I may have some decent quality of life now, lived with peace in my heart, knowing that for now I'm the best person that I can be.  No one will ever take my dignity from me again; I won't allow it.