hands

Those appalling hands
bludgeoned petals from the flower.
You remember the grunt of them
the slobber and the snout of them
fumbling through your underclothes
their coarseness wrenching
at your budding sensitivity; again
and again you are there: you feel
 those odious hands
scuttle like a scorpion along your inner thigh
poking, crawling for the angle of you,
your pulsing wound. You recall
something within you collapsing, wanting to scream –
but you couldn’t: you had to survive this.
Your body besieged, usurped,
you took refuge deep within -
and the barricades went up.

    Now
what should have connected has shrivelled,
what should have bloomed was uprooted,
until the fearful child
bottled and shelved within you
pouts and blusters, demanding to be noticed
while the unfinished adult outside
lets no one close enough to reach,
fearing that each bears the stain
 of those detestable hands.

Sept 15