This House of Cards Read online

  This House of Cards

  This House of Cards

  Hannah Brown

  For The Girls <3

  There is a fire in my soul,

  clawing at the walls inside my ribs,

  for me to let her out. And there is a hurricane

  resting at the base of my throat,

  waiting for me to set her free.

  She is waiting for the day I release her from my grasp

  and everyone will finally know

  the power ebbed and flowing just beneath

  the surface of my small frame.

  Only then will she be allowed to scream

  all the things I’ve been holding back from saying,

  in fear your small being’s would not

  be able to comprehend them.

  And you will know that I am she who offers life.

  I am she who made you who you are,

  who allowed you this glimmering moment of joy.

  And I am she who will wash it all away.

  In one swift kick, all the lies you’ve built up

  around you, this house of cards you call home,

  will come tumbling down around your soiled feet.

  And you will know that I am God

  by the way I build you a castle

  from the parts of me you left behind

  when you finally decided to go.

  A home that will withstand the earth’s

  mightiest of rumblings. A palace for you

  and the damsel you replaced me with,

  even the parents who berated me

  for telling them truths they were too afraid to hear.

  You will know that I am God by the way I hold myself.

  You will see the light pouring out of me

  and you will beg me to tell you my secret.

  How did I manage to recover so magnificently?

  But I will not answer. Not today. Not for you.

  Savages

  Let yourself be angry without being bitter. Be mad that someone hurt you without letting what they did consume you. Let the fire in your eyes burn without allowing it to get so hot it melts your loving soul.

  Choose to be disgusted with the people who thought they could break your bones, without losing hold of all the good inside of you. Remember that people are human and we all make mistakes without allowing anyone to walk all over you.

  Allow the memories of pain and desperation to make yourself livid without crossing over into hopelessness and depression. Strike a match against all the broken pieces they dropped on the floor when they left you, and use the flames to teach them a lesson they won’t dare forget.

  Let your heart break and your body shake until you don’t think you can take it anymore; then use the ashes of all the things you burned to forge a sword strong enough to kill your demons. Show them all the reasons people say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. Except that shouldn’t be the saying, should it? Fuck you for making it seem like she’s only strong because she was rejected by a man.

  I love you

  lies I tell my mother

  I need bruises, not strings

  Don’t

  Don’t kiss my forehead

  Don’t try to hold my hand

  Don’t apologize for anything. Ever.

  Don’t pull my chair out at the dinner table

  Don’t open any doors for me

  Don’t try to pay the bill

  Don’t let me put my feet on the dash

  Don’t ask me how my day was

  Don’t try to comfort me

  Don’t introduce me to your parents

  Don’t try to get to know me

  Don’t count the days since we first met

  Don’t call me when you get home safe

  Don’t even make it home safe

  I am the alpha

  These bones are stronger than the wolves I command.

  You know, the ones you think you run with.

  for my mother

  I know now, it’s not my fault.

  I’m not the one who should have known better,

  and it isn’t that you never loved me,

  just that you were never taught how.

  I am trying not to be mad at you anymore.

  you are so very brave

  Some nights the wind blows

  just a little too hard,

  and the earth shakes your organs

  until they’re lying on the ground beside you.

  When rock hard truths shatter your bones,

  hydrochloric acid corrodes your vision.

  The jagged edges of your lover’s lips

  tear apart your flesh

  as her fingers rip at the seams

  of your broken heart.

  Nights are spent wandering inside

  the haunted abyss your mind has become.

  Time is spent trying to go back far enough

  to find the very moment everything changed.

  You are dying to know what went wrong.

  And you are dying to pretend nothing did.

  Sold souls to those once beloved.

  Halo’s traded for horns, at the hands of traitors,

  encouraged by the pleading whispers of the devil himself.

  You survived the supposed “worst of it”

  with battle armor torn to shreds and

  knives left in your back for safe keeping,

  battles were fought while banking on facts proved fiction.

  What you are is a fool in warriors clothing,

  with a sense of direction lost long ago.

  Me ever loving you at all was so completely wrong.

  how do you break the glass?

  Life in a snow globe is grand

  Glitter in a bubble

  Shards of metal piercing skin

  Glued to a pedestal

  In a sphere of no escape

  growth

  I have no regrets about what happened or how I chose to handle things. I loved him. It wasn’t a romantic love, and I certainly wasn’t in love, but I did think, at the very least, we would be friends for a lot longer than we actually were.

  There was no possible way for me to have known what was going to happen or even how he was feeling, because I can’t see the future, and he never told me. The only thing that could have changed that situation at all, is if he were to have sat down and talked about why he was upset instead of raping me. And that’s on him.

  That is his fault for not being able to control himself and it is his parents fault for never teaching him how or expecting him to do so. Nothing that went down would have changed in any way by me doing something different. If it wasn’t me, it would have been someone else.

  And you know what, it was someone else. He raped three other girls just that I know of and none of those assaults were my fault either. The horrible things that happened are all on him and one of these days it will come back to bite him in the ass.

  the rocks

  There are rocks in my throat.

  Small with jagged edges,

  they are making a game

  of churning the food in my stomach

  and taunting it to come back up.

  “None shall pass.”

  Is what they say to the oxygen molecules

  trying desperately to find my lungs.

  They are begging me not to forget

  the feeling of your hands on my skin.

  They sing songs debating who’s fault it is

  as I press my palms to my forearms,

  throw out anything sharp or pointy,

  and swallow the sobs

  that bring back memories of you.

  “He will come back” is what they scream

  “He will bring a g
un and this time

  he will finish what he started.”

  as I turn the lights out at night.

  There are rocks in my throat

  and they want me to keep hurting.

  But they don’t know me

  or the fire I breathe

  when my wounds are ready to heal.

  I don’t think anyone will ever be able to fathom the ways letting themselves go will tear their skin apart, until it’s far too late.

  an open invitation to grow the hell up

  She hurt you?

  You hurt her first.

  She scares them?

  You scare her.

  You scare me.

  The qualities you’re villainizing in her are learned behaviors taught by the example you’ve chosen to set. She is not the problem. You are. She only needs help because you refuse to accept it. It is about damn time you stopped playing the victim, stopped orchestrating the lives of those around you in order to feel better about your lack of control.

  Its pathetic.

  She isn’t messing up. This girl has her whole life ahead of her and the second she is out of your clutches she will flourish. She has decades to become who she wants to be while you don’t have much longer to ask for forgiveness.

  It’s time to realize that being the adult in a situation isn’t equal to bullying another person into giving you what you think you want.

  ouch

  Soft as a sunrise, warm as a broken smile, your love was a mountain range placed strategically on the beach. Close enough for the trees to disguise the sounds of the waves as their own, and subtly drift away in the breeze when you decided to be done with me.

  I knew the relationship was doomed when he had to google the Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack to know who Fleetwood Mac was.

  breakfast

  I appreciate the fact

  you think you’ve grown

  from the person

  you used to be,

  but I deserve to be a whole lot

  more to you than just

  the girl you never would have

  spoken to in high school.

  Stop pretending your saying

  things like that

  is anything

  other than horse shit.

  A thinly veiled declaration

  of all the ways

  you think you’ve

  lowered your standards.

  sober skinny dipping

  Sharing unedited poetry with someone is a violently intimate act.

  DAria

  Let me tell you something about the girl made of seashells.

  She was born in the ocean,

  spit from the waves and clothed in their shores.

  She is a wild thing.

  A goddess.

  She brings out the best in me

  and would give the world to see my smile.

  I have never heard her ask for anything

  in return for her generosity.

  This warrior woman,

  this terrifyingly breathtaking force of nature;

  we danced on the moon and grew flowers in our hair.

  She never knew how to surrender

  and it was the greatest thing I ever loved in someone.

  your decadence is boring me

  I am trying to pull myself out of the

  comfortability this nothingness provides.

  These lights are just too damn bright

  and my hands shake beneath the weight

  of this cigarette.

  A slow death is not enough;

  it must be self inflicted.

  i wear the scars like battle armor

  It’s still painful;

  the feeling of your hands on my skin.

  The bruises have been fading,

  but not quickly enough

  for me to forget how they got there.

  Delusional

  You don’t love me.

  You’re infatuated with the idea of me.

  The things you want only exist in your head.

  You don’t know me.

  You remember who I was before,

  but the person I used to be

  is not the same as the one I am now.

  I did not wait for you.

  I am not interested in fulfilling any

  teenage fantasies except my own,

  and I refuse to slow down

  just so you can catch up.

  independence day

  Say what you will about the ways I chose to

  handle your violent assaults on my body

  autonomy and my rights/purpose as a woman,

  but I was never a victim of your abuse.

  I am a mother fucking survivor. A fighter.

  Just because you were able to illicit enough fear

  and confusion to pin me down physically,

  does not mean you have a single bit of power

  or control over me.

  You coward.

  You fool.

  You moronic piece of shit.

  You know nothing about the universe

  or what makes a man.

  If you did, you would have asked,

  would have stopped when I said no.

  I have nothing to prove to you.

  And you best believe I will relish in the pleasure

  I gain from turning this horror story

  into a never-ending well of courage and love

  for all the women who have known bastards like you.

  You love how many of us there are. The idea that you’ll never be alone again is comforting to you in ways your mother could never be. You have abandoned her in her time of need and found solace in shoddily created delusions. Possibly the greatest mistake was thinking you could live without her. In placing the blame and turning away, in allowing yourself to obsess over not being anything like her, you were too busy to realize she’s exactly who you have become. The opposite of one extreme is never any better than the first.

  "us"

  I know what it’s like

  when your friends

  aren’t really your friends.

  Perhaps that’s why we got along

  so well in the beginning.

  Because none of our friends

  were anything other than a shell,

  an empty casing

  barely able to distort

  the far away thoughts

  and nothingness inside of souls.

  please stop

  If you’re worried about how sad the words I write have become, what you need to learn is that when I put them down on paper, they cease to exist in my mind.

  i am

  Angel wings made of clouds,

  golden dragons etched into snow white skin,

  scorpions resting in palms,

  crowns of flowers dripping in amber,

  and eyes made of the burning embers

  that fall away from tongues set on fire.

  generational trauma

  I should not have to teach my mother what it means to love a human right.

  i don't

  I forgive you for all the things

  you’ve done to hurt me,

  both big and small,

  intentional and coincidental.

  Please do not think this means

  I want to keep you in my life.

  daddy issues

  I feel bad writing about my dad so openly, however, it seems a necessary thing to do at this point in time. He always claims to be doing his best, but sometimes I wonder what it is he’s trying to do. Is he trying to love me? Or does he want me to give him the approval he could never give to himself?

  The man who raised me was blissfully unaware that he was never taught how to love another human and ignorant to all the ways that would affect more than just himself. I love my dad, but he hurts me. He conveniently disappears when things get hard and I need him most. He hides parts of the truth from me and gets angry when I go out in search of them.

  My da
d can’t seem to remember the day he threw me across the room and I hit my head on the wall, while I wrack my brain to remember what it was he got so riled up over. He thinks control over my actions is synonymous with protection, yet could not manage to say one word when I was molested… or raped.

  My father is the silent type of abusive.

  The kind that makes you question whether or not you’re really hurting, and spend eternity tangled up in your mind trying to convince yourself you are making it all up. Perhaps that’s why it is so damn hard to talk about or piece together. His demeanor is wonderful and sweet and caring if you ignore the gaslighting and pretend the bruises are from a nasty fall.I’ve spent my whole life pining for the approval of a man who refuses to accept my happiness unless it is found the same way as his. Some try to tell me it is all a bad dream; others vehemently proclaim that this is life and it is too late to change the way we live it.