Growing Pain

Molested at the age of 6

Before it was popular

Before it was called rape

Crystal Rose grew up thinking

Virginity was a state of mind

*

She never knew the difference

She never learned to bleed

Violation was what men did

To little girls - and big

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But there was a difference

An unseen difference

It festered in hidden places

In the soft undersides of her

Pride and underneath her skirts

Of self esteem - unnoticed it grew

Like a well tended rose

Cultivating long thorns to prick

Her would-be captors

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Throughout womanhood she

Played her roles - wife mother

Someones lover chapters

In a seemingly endless epoch

Sometimes she was loved

Sometimes it meant something

But mostly her growth was

Exterior on the hips and thighs

And around her heart caution

Grew like heavy armor

*

Her youth eroded away

In increments of confusion

Until aloneness connected

The dots of her wounds

In a dream or a poem

And lifetimes of cause

And effect were explained

*

She finally understands

the soul knows no gender

the pain reaped

from rape was by chance

the anger she rises to

Is by choice