pestilence and best-i-cans

i've been trying to kill myself for almost four years, i may have said four going on five, but it's been three going on four--

--actively--

--since i tried to go sit at fort greene park to just stop remembering the rapes

stop worrying about how to ask for greg's information and not be creepy, because dominic didn't believe he'd given it to me in the first place and refused to ask for it again

i swear, the rapes didn't hurt anymore; i was learning how to just be happy being me and not letting these men keep me down, telling me i'm too ugly to say no

but that one, i don't know how to explain, it killed my hope, not because of the rapist

but because my heart finally sang when it saw someone's smile and my pussy was all, "totally just got wet, feel that in your panties?" and my brain was like, "then maybe it could become a friendship or even something...something good"

and i knew that i'd been fighting to stay alive for me and that it'd been a good thing, and that the person who saw me at my most terrified and least able to cope

loved, loved, loved seeing me at my best one night

--and how does something so happy--

survive a rape? i was doing some really important things and making great connections

and it was all--

but i see the rape, i see it, it is the only one i still see

and i came here to become someone new, but what makes me a good me is still here

what makes me a smart me and fun me and fuckable

is still here in spades

and my therapist will understand, she will understand why i'm so afraid of disappointing someone i don't know, a bartender named greg who used to frighten me but then turned into the best ally i could have the summer i was being sexually assaulted, saying i could come when he was tending bar

he has my soul more than floyd

and if i tell

he's going to want me dead, just like floyd

but 

it's not me being bad