Her Trauma is Showing

A poem dedicated to everyone whom lives with trauma

Be careful with her.
She wears her trauma on her sleeve.
See how she always has to pay, or split the check?
That's how you know she has been burned before.
It may seem like nice gestures of gifts;
But really she has had someone care for her before.
Before they ripped the rug out from under her,
Left her stranded.
Her trauma is showing,
She always has to be self reliant, and never at ease.


Tell me
Does she do everything for you at home?
Cooks, cleans, tends to every little thing.
Loving, no?
That is how she will believe
That maybe if she does enough you wont leave.
Never asking anything in return.
Her trauma is showing,
She remembers the days without love,
Where she could never be enough.
All her hard work earned her broken words
And bones.


I know, I know.
It's not very fair of me to ask.
You were not the one who broke her identity so.
You did not choke her up against walls,
Or break her will.
Or rape her sanity, till she couldn't tell what was real.
Still, please, please be careful with her.
Her trauma is showing.


So much so now it is a part of her identity.
A madness she can not seem to quell,
So she goes on and on.
An empty quest, with a tragic ending in mind.
I understand one day you might leave her,
Maybe it's a ill gotten match.
Maybe she is not the one for you,
Or maybe you are lessons to one another.
I know when that day comes, she will fight you.
Her trauma will be exposed, raw, triggered.
All the parts of her you knew were there;
But couldn't see,
You may see them then.
It does not make you a monster.
She will know, she will understand;
But her trauma won't.
Like a rabid beast behind a cage,
A rage that takes over when approached.


Her trauma is showing.
Her past she wears on her sleeve.
With people pleasing and disbelieving she is worthy.
It's been how she created an identity.
It's how she survives.


Please let her down gently when you leave.
Hold her and remind her she is all she sets out to be.
Because her trauma is showing,
She has need of kinder things.
So be careful with her, love her unconditionally.

Reviews

[Voicesunspoken]

Well written. It described very well the trauma we go through.