After Emailing Your Mom a Poem: Re Sexual Trauma
by Zoë Fay-Stindt
She says she’s “surprised
it still haunts you,” brushing
the needles from your hair.
“I’m hard and wish to hell I weren’t.”
You wonder what to write back,
how to explain the hostage
your nervous system has trained:
how the trauma lives quietly for months,
careful not to tip anything over inside you
until you find yourself on a date
in your own car, a man’s arms
wrapped around you in fervor,
and you have gone slack,
silvergrass limp with first frost,
your voice blued in its tunnel.
You’re sure you were in control.
But your body, now bowed
into a ball in the driver’s seat
didn’t get the signal.
Everyone wants you to stop writing
about it, this unkillable thing, enough, enough.
You have been loved, yes,
you are fortunate.
“Don’t harden yourself, baby,”
your mom writes back.
She picks out the splinters
from your teeth. “Stay open.”
it still haunts you,” brushing
the needles from your hair.
“I’m hard and wish to hell I weren’t.”
You wonder what to write back,
how to explain the hostage
your nervous system has trained:
how the trauma lives quietly for months,
careful not to tip anything over inside you
until you find yourself on a date
in your own car, a man’s arms
wrapped around you in fervor,
and you have gone slack,
silvergrass limp with first frost,
your voice blued in its tunnel.
You’re sure you were in control.
But your body, now bowed
into a ball in the driver’s seat
didn’t get the signal.
Everyone wants you to stop writing
about it, this unkillable thing, enough, enough.
You have been loved, yes,
you are fortunate.
“Don’t harden yourself, baby,”
your mom writes back.
She picks out the splinters
from your teeth. “Stay open.”
Zoë Fay-Stindt (she/her/figuring it out) is a bicontinental poet with roots in both the French and American south. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, and has appeared or is forthcoming in Blue Earth, Winter Tangerine, EcoTheo, and others.