SoulSpeakOut
Artwork
Survivor Self-Portrait & Poetry
Mike Shugart writes that this photo was “taken during a very depressing time in my life related to childhood abuse. I feel that some people would benefit from seeing another person who feels like they do without difficult conversation.”
Daddy’s Girl
Mike Shugart
They called me Amtrak Annie
Like the train, only the pain
Wasn’t funny.
My new life as daddy’s new wife
Began when I was nine,
Deep in the piney woods.
During the drama, my momma
Was just a comma in my life sentence.
I remember the first time Daddy stood hovering over me.
He said he was there to cover me.
The look in his eyes wasn’t the same.
I didn’t have a name for the look
That took my childhood away from me.
As I searched his face for grace,
He touched me in the private place
Below my waist.
The metallic taste of fear
As he whispered in my ear,
While the tears streamed down my cheek,
Blood stains on the sheets…
For a week, I could barely walk.
To hear Daddy talk and sing about our “new” relationship-
A violation of a minor too young to choose,
So much to lose.
I saw a lot more of him that year.
Almost every night the fright
Returned to my room, grooming me
For my life’s work.
If I had a nickel for every trickle of semen,
Boys in men’s clothes dreaming
With their shriveled pricks.
Finding courage in a Mason jar,
Going too far…
Cars lined up in my trailer park after dark
Waiting their turn to learn, then burn me
With cigarettes.
Rotten teeth smile at me
While my head bangs against the bed board
Like a dead whore,
Too poor to kick them out the door.
Instead, they return for more, pants on the floor
As they walk down the hall
To their wind-up doll
The boys flapping in the breeze,
A sleazy reminder of revenge yet taken.
Shaken but not broken.
A token gift given before they drive away
With my soul.
As I grew older and bolder, my meat no longer sweet,
My Daddy beat me,
No longer called me Honey as the money ran out.
When I turned sixteen,
Thoughts of leaving crossed my mind.
If I could find just one Cadillac
That didn’t belong to a maniac!
Just one man who didn’t have
Fleas in his hair,
Dirty underwear, and
Evil to spare.
Just one man who…
Spares the rod, respects my body.
Hardly notices the scars on my heart
Or my crooked smile.
He would hate the men who dared to sin against me.
Defend me.
Insulate me against the inevitable grief that will
Surround me.
Teach me to live…
And forgive…
And about love.
EPILOGUE: (phone call from Daddy)
His voice was a claw-
Tearing at the raw wound.
My spirit silently screamed,
Repulsed by the power,
My soul still controlled by the old fear,
The dread so near to the surface.
Sometimes I forget about the scars,
The bars of my Private Prison
Like a specter risen,
Driven to resurrect.
No respecter-
Reflector of pain.
How can I gain control
Of the old cold enemy?
My heart frozen by a way chosen
Years ago to stem the flow.
Where to go now?
The power to change,
Rearrange…
A strange new way to play-
To stay in the
Game of Life.
Note: Author wrote this poem as a combination of an abused acquaintance’s experience and news stories of a string of rapes on women one summer. Epilogue is based on my relationship with my father.
