Get Them While They're Fresh

Spoken word

There's this saying…
Get them while they're fresh.
Usually to describe baked goods
Or hot pizzas,
Or people.
At least that’s what her father thought
The first day he told her that what they were doing
Was normal.
When she asked why he had to
Touch her there.
When he told her she was the most beautiful girl in the world.
He may have been an idiot, but he was smart.
She was only a little girl
Who would believe a little girl?
Who would do that to a little girl?
She was just a little girl.
She was too young to smell the difference between
Whiskey and morning breath,
To understand why her mother woke up every morning
With fresh bruises.
He had her right where he wanted her,
When she could still call him Daddy,
Even though he was more of a dictator than a father.
She was raped before she could spell statutory,
Beaten before she could fight back,
And silenced before she could find her voice.
She only had her teddy bear and three goldfish,
Although one was almost always sleeping near the top,
She soon grew to wish she was in the place of Goldie,
Because death seemed a lot better than
spending every day cowering in the shadow of her father,
Drunken and angry,
beating her mother to ease the pain that burned inside him.
Every day.
Every day.
Every day.
She was victim.
Every day.
She was her father’s fantasy.
Every day.
She was her mother’s only reason to live.
Every day.
She spent hours scrubbing her body,
Hoping to wipe away her father’s sin.
To take away the feeling of his hands,
Everywhere.
All of the time.
Haunting her dreams.
Clouding her mind.
Every day.
She had made her first enemy before she could make her first friend.
But I guess that’s just what happens when you get them while they’re fresh.