The Present Past

The Present Past

            Darkness looms all around, I raise up from my bed.

            A silence clings to the air, a silence that creates terror.

            Out of the darkness come perfectly detailed images, I can see them play upon the darkness as if they are really there.

            A cry escapes my lips, I would not have known if I had not heard it. A cry of pure terror rises again from my lips.

            Please, someone tell me it isn’t really happening now.

            I can see them, hear them, smell them.

            Please, tell me this isn’t happening.

            Someone says ‘it’s all in your mind, stop thinking about it.’

            My mind screams ‘I can feel him touching me right now,

its not in my mind.

I can taste his semen in my mouth,

it’s not in my mind.

I can hear his moans,

it’s not in my mind.

I can see his nasty smile as he rapes me,

it’s not just in my mind.’

            My heart leaps inside my chest as I feel him take what he has no right to have.

            Now the others come, all of them taking whatever they please.

            I can feel them too.

            Then the images leave.

            Alone I sit, in the dark, with all of the pain, the anger, the feeling of violation that I felt when these things happened to me.

            People try to tell me that it’s in the past and that I should just move on.

            They don’t understand that for everyone that has gone through this, that there is only such a thing as the present past. 

by Mindy Hawk, All Rights Reserved