These Bandaged Wings

You came to me
You told me you need me

I told you to get away
For years I was yours
To do with as you pleased

Now I am free
Now I can say no

But you wouldn't take no
So you made me yours again
Your raped me and left me shaking

Please stop
Just get away, I beg

So you left
You disappeared
You got what you needed and jumped

Now I cannot move
I cannot breathe

What was once bandaged wings
Are now shattered beyond repair
As I lay here and cry

Gratitude

There's a silver lining

In every cloud

A rainbow

After every storm

A light

At the end of the tunnel

But most of all there's love

Love and friendship after pain

When friends and family come together

To help and protect the one they love

Its the unity

That strengthens their mission

Its the love

That combats the hatred

The beauty

That wipes away the ugliness

The good

That overtakes the bad

Its all this and more I am grateful for

Every single day

But most of all this year

Thank you for everything

Happy Thanksgiving!

My Deepest Desire

I am a person
a human being 

I am a soul
with feelings and emotions

I am a woman
who wishes and desires

I don't ask much
not for your love
not for your affection

I don't desire
your approval
nor your flattery

All I want
All we want
All anyone wants
is respect

It is not just a mere desire
It is my deepest desire

But it is more than that
It is a necessity

Like the air we breathe
The food we eat
And the water we drink

Every one of us needs respect

We are people, human beings 
And women with souls. 

A New Year

A New Year

New beginnings

A chance to start fresh

The opportunity to wipe it clean

And begin anew

For over a decade I would try

Every single year

To make strong resolutions

I attempted to be a good person

And wash my soul clean of sin

But every year I failed

Constantly covering up the blemishes

Yet, they always resurfaced

Never fully healed

Blemishes that uglied my reflection

It tortured my already distraught soul

I thought I was too bad to be good

There was no hope

No chance of a future

Not for the likes of me

But then I matured

I was surrounded by strength

Affirmations from friends lifted me up

And I slowly realized a deep truth

It was never my fault

I am not to blame

I did not perpetuate evil

I did not seduce my molester

He committed evil

I was merely a victim

But now I am a survivor

A survivor starting a new year

A new life

Survivors

Survivors,
You're my sisters, my brothers
The ones I never had

You support me
You protect me
You empathize with me

Like they never did

You hold my hand
You lead the way
You keep me standing

And I do the same for you

Because we're brothers and sisters
Friends and supporters
Fellow survivors

You are my family that I chose
The family that I need
The family I never had

Thank you.

Dear Mom (Part II)

Mother,

They tell me about a feeling
Its something every mother feels
Its a love that knows no bounds 

Do you feel that way towards me
That even when I err
I am still your daughter
That you are the only mother I will have

I need you
To guide me
To love me
To hug me
And accept me

I've made mistakes
But haven't we all

Mother,

You tell me you hate me
You tell me I'm bad
Never good enough

You ignored the abuse
And blamed the symptoms on me
Your young child
An innocent little girl

Now you attempt to ease your guilt
By transforming me to a bad girl
In your mind

Where I am provocative
And unfaithful

Where the labels you stick on me
Are true and fit with who I am

You call me fat
Lazy and worthless
A whore, a prostitute

You wish the worst on me
On your very own flesh and blood
You campaign against me
Never at my defense

Why, mother
Why must you ignore my tears
And suffering

You turn a blind eye to my pain
Can't you see I am just a helpless girl
Trying to stay afloat

Yet you push me down
Hoping I'll drown
So you can be right
And your pride will remain intact

I hope you are happy now
I have left
Left you and your games
You and your negativity

I am free
More free than I ever imagined possible
There will be no more of your abuse tying me down

Now I am free
To soar high
And heal.

Blessings

Amongst the pain and tears
There's a light
A bright shining light

With each breath I take
And every day I face
That light shines brighter

The struggles I have overcome
The challenges and hurdles
Life put in front of me
I jumped over
Each time with higher leaps and bounds

My life has been so tumultuous
Never a peaceful moment
Always a new test to pass
And I have always passed
And given strength to that light

By now, I thought the game is over
The light has reached its limit
It cannot shine any brighter
The challenges are due to cease

But no, I was wrong

For every time I smile

And every time I laugh
For each blessing I acknowledge
The light gains power

And my life is so full of goodness

I am so very blessed
Even if the times of suffering
There's a silver lining
To hold onto and to grasp

So every time I choose to notice
To seek and to acknowledge
My life becomes richer
Happiness surrounds me
In the glow of that bright light

I Believe

God,

I believe
I trust
But I don't understand

I believe in you,  God
I believe you run the world

I trust in you, God
I trust that there's a greater plan

But I don't understand you, God
I can't comprehend

Why it is necessary?
Why do we need to suffer?
Why do we have so much pain?

Why, God, why?
Why me? Why her? Why him? 

What did we do to deserve such a fate?
What terrible sin did we commit?

How are we supposed to deal with a living hell?
How can I cope with this endless pain?

When will it end?
When will I feel whole again?

Where will the relief come from?
Where should I search for help?

Who will save us?
Who can I reach out to?

Who will hurt us?
Who will use my body and heart to their own advantage?

I need some answers
Some consolation

Something 
Anything

To help me understand

I believe
I trust
But I don't understand. 

For This I Cry

For these things I weep; my eye, yea my eye, sheds tears, for the comforter to restore my soul is removed from me (Eicha, Lamentations 1:16)

A childhood stolen
For this I cry

The pain I suffered
For this I cry

The disbelief at my pain
For this I cry

The blame and finger pointing
For this I cry

All the childhoods stolen
For this I cry

The innocent victims unprotected
For this I cry

The youth who take on the duty of the elders
For this I cry

The monsters who roam around free
For this I cry

All those who choose to remain naive
For this I cry

For this we should all cry
Till the day our tears flood the world
And there is no longer what to cry about

And God shall wipe the tears off every face, and the shame of His people shall remove from upon the entire earth (Yeshayahu, Isaiah 25:8) 

Guest Post: There and Back Again

Guest Post by Asher Lovy

It’s not easy having a relationship with God, especially if you never had a good relationship with your parents. That’s the analogy generally used when explaining the mystery of God’s plan, to a parent making decisions for their child that the child is too young to understand. Of course, children tend to rebel against their parents; it’s all a part of growing up. But they usually come back when they realize that their parents loved them all along and had only their best interests at heart. It’s a lot harder, though, when it’s God you’re dealing with, because parents respond more overtly and clearly than God does. With God, all you have is faith, and your belief that everything He does is ultimately for the best. It’s so easy to lose sight of that. 

Life had fallen apart. After months of trying to play peacekeeper between my abusive mother and me, my grandmother broke down and was hospitalized. When she left the hospital, she was severely depressed, nearly catatonic. The only way for me to get money for daily necessities was to sit with her and try to coax some emotion out of her. If I could get her to talk--to feel--then I could connect with her enough to make her understand why I needed money. I was 17 years old, hardly a trained psychologist. It was torture to have to do that every day. She would sit there telling me why she had given up on life, how everything that had happened was her fault, and how she had felt in the moment she had given up.

 I would run out afterward, after I had gotten the money I needed, and scream. Just scream. And punch the walls, and curse God and demand to know why--why I was being subjected to my life. All those years in a dysfunctional family, and then the abuse, and then having to get my heart ripped apart every day just to survive. God was torturing me and I hated Him for it. According to the Torah, the penalty for cursing God is death. Personally, I didn’t care; I wanted to die anyway. 

I went to shul every day, three times a day, but the words I was saying felt wrong on my lips. I was praying to a God who would never answer, asking for mercy I’d never receive. I choked out shacharis, mincha, and maariv through tears and sobs, and every day it got harder and harder. Eventually I stopped crying. Like a child who is told that Santa Claus doesn’t exist, I got over the fact that God wasn’t there and tried to move on with my life. Sure, I went through all the motions, but it was only because that was the life I knew. Until I found something else I could believe, I wasn’t quite ready to abandon my lifestyle. 

God was gone, and in His absence was a void. I started looking for something to fill it. First I looked for a way to maintain my beliefs in the absence of God. I had always been taught that what separated the Jewish people from the atheists and idolaters of this world was their morality. No longer believing in God made me feel amoral. I started studying moral philosophy, trying to find a way to maintain a belief in absolute morality while still eschewing the idea of absolute morality requiring a deity, or higher entity. Kant’s moral philosophy, based on the categorical imperative, appealed to me at the time, especially since it acknowledged the practical need for the idea of some higher power to exist in order to maintain any absolute truth, but allowed for no higher being to actually exist. To quote Voltaire, “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.” In short, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.”

So I had morality, which made me feel somewhat better, but I felt something still lacking in that void left by God’s departure. My life became a war between the two sides of me, the part that wanted Judaism and the part that wanted to reject God entirely. Though I had given up on God and religion, I felt sad doing so, as if an important part of me had just been lost. I started debating anyone who would accommodate me. Usually, I would take the side of Judaism against any opposition, but my heart wasn’t in it. I was trying to convince myself as much as my opponents. Instead of feeling vindicated after winning a debate, all I felt was shameful, and frustrated. I read every hashkafa book I could get my hands on, watched every video about atheism I could find, argued about both with whomever would give me their time, and none of it helped fill that void. 

The more I searched, the more I kept seeing that there really is only one truth when it comes to belief in God: There is no proof; there is only faith. That’s what emuna p’shuta means to me now. Not blind, unquestioning faith, but the understanding that after you’ve questioned, after you’ve searched high and low for proof, all there really is, is faith. Confronted with this truth I had to decide: Do I, or do I not, believe in God? 

It’s not a question you can answer in one day, so I took my time. I sat back and examined my life as it unfolded, trying to honestly determine if I could believe in God or not. It’s always the little things. The money I would make here and there when I needed it most, the opportunities that seemed to arise from nowhere, the people who came into my life when I had no one. Little things, but to me they were signs of some divine intervention. Grudgingly I accepted the existence of God, but that didn’t put Him back in my good graces. I hated Him just as much, but I couldn’t deny His existence. I just couldn’t see any good or purpose in my suffering. 

That autumn, I wrote a draft of my memoir. Two weeks, fifty-thousand words. I barely ate or slept. After it was finished, I labored over it for a few days, correcting spelling and grammatical errors, until it was, for a rough draft, perfect. That night, I went to a FedEx store and had it printed and bound. While I knew I was supposed to be feeling elation at having accomplished something so incredible in such a short time, what I actually felt was sadness and emptiness. I nearly jumped in front of a train that night. That book had been my purpose, and there it was, in my hands, printed and bound--finished. My purpose, finished. 

On a suggestion from a friend, I started volunteering at a drop-in center for kids at risk. I felt that perhaps others could benefit from my experience. In doing so, I discovered a purpose, a silver lining, almost, to everything that had happened. I still didn’t like the process, or the fact that I had to experience any of it, but God’s purpose started making sense--the good I had been looking for was beginning to make sense. It may seem odd for me to call the fact that I have the benefit of such unfortunate experience a good thing, but, to me, there is nothing more beautiful than that first smile breaking across a face stained by too many years of crying. If my experience means that I can be the cause of that smile, then that’s the purpose--that’s the good. 

I don’t think I’ll ever understand why I was chosen for the life I was given, but I don’t think I need to know that anymore. Not yet, anyway. I will one day, after I’ve lived my life, and I move on to the next world. For now, though, I have my God, I have my purpose, and that’s all I need. Don’t get me wrong, my relationship with God is anything but easy, but it’s the fact that there’s a relationship that I enjoy so much. I feel that, after everything I’ve been through, and after losing and then finding God again, I am much closer to Him than most other people. I feel that closeness every day, and I have no doubt that God loves me. I see His kindness in my life every day. I am a proudly Orthodox Jew, and I love my God. 

In Response to Pop Chassid: Why I Dress Modestly

This is in response to 

Pop Chassid's Appeal to Women for Modesty 

*I am in no way criticizing his post. I thought it was very thought out and authentic. 

This is just my personal take on the subject.*

I dress tznius. 
Or at least I try to. 
I try harder than I care to. 

And then I tell myself that I'm dignified and full of self respect. 
Perhaps it even makes me better than the girl in a low cut blouse. 

After all, I don't look cheap. 
Men don't think I'm easy. 
I'm a classy woman. 
That's what I tell myself. 

But that's not the truth. 
It could not be farther from the truth. 
In reality, I have no self dignity. 
I constantly put myself down and am worse than my own worst critic. 

The truth is sad. 
The truth is that I hate my body. 
I'm ashamed of it. 
It feels dirty to me. 
In fact, any male attention feels dirty. 
It triggers me. 

It takes me back to a time when I was used for my body. 
When I was abused. 
When I was molested. 

I was a little girl, just seven years old. 
He would force me to get undressed 
and show my private parts to his buddies and they would pay him. 

As the years went on, it got worse. 
His friends were no longer involved. 
It was just me and him. 
Or whatever was left of me. 
I didn't have much of a say. 
And he was the active one. 

The abuse stopped abruptly before I hit puberty. 
Before my body began to develop. 
And so when it did, I was afraid. 
Afraid to provoke him, seduce him or catch his attention in any way. 

So I jumped on the tznius bandwagon. 
After all, we were taught that the woman holds the power
She is the one that brings down man. 
So I must have not been modest enough 
and that's why I was punished with the abuse. 
Now, I can cover up, stay out of sight 
and nothing will happen to me again. 

I was wrong, of course. 

Sitting on my high horse, 
I had to convince myself 
that being tznius really did make me a better person. 
Otherwise, he might see through my act and get to me again. 

But then it happened. 
This time involving someone else. 
Someone meant to be my equal. 
But he didn't respect my boundaries. 
He had to have what he couldn't have. 

And I was raped. 

My shame in my body grew stronger. 
Religion was no longer a priority. 
After all, I didn't want to be anything like my abusers. 
My "holy" abusers. 
But I still kept up the tznius facade. 
I hid behind my skirts and buttoned up blouses, 
hoping no one would realize how provocative I really was 
and what disgusting things I had done with my body. 

I look in the mirror and I cringe. 
Tears come rolling down my cheeks. 
I cannot bear the sight of my own body. 
They tell me I'm beautiful, 
but the face staring back at me doesn't seem so pretty. 
All I see are the scars of my past. 
It's so easy to find fault and pick on every detail. 
I feel no pride in being a woman. 
I see no beauty in the female figure. 
Its just a dirty mess in my mind.

I dress modestly but for all the wrong reasons.

Giveaway!

Hush by Eishes Chayil was the first book on sexual abuse that I had ever read.
It was recommended to me by a dear friend who at the time did not know about my past.
I read it in one sitting and cried through the whole book. It hit home for me and really changed something in the way I dealt with my pain. That was when I decided to get help for the trauma I had undergone as a little girl.

It is a powerful book that should be read by every single person.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Child's Play

Most children played
I destroyed

They played house
And pretended to be mommies

 

I took the dolls
And ripped them apart

 

They played school
And pretended to be teachers

 

I went to school
And got into trouble everyday

 

They played doctor
And pretended to check one another

 

He played doctor
And touched and hurt my body

 

They had fun
They laughed and played
Skipped and hopped
Giggling about life

 

I had nightmares
I cried and lived in fear
Running away, trying to hide
Crying and wishing to die

 

While they played
I was played with

 

While they had fun and games
I was tortured and abused

 

Childhood is meant to be fun
And happy
Not scary and sad

 

I lost my childhood
It was stolen from me
In broad daylight
No one stopped the thief
They just watched from the sidelines

 

And now it's too late
For a childhood stolen
Can never be returned

Flashbacks

I lie here crying
My heart is shattered
I am in so much pain

 

The pain won't go away
Its getting stronger and stronger

 

Why did you hurt me?
Why did you molest me?
Why didn't you listen to my pleas to stop?

 

I cried
I begged
I kicked
And screamed

 

I lie here crying
Remembering
The pain is so real
As if its still happening

 

The pain is in my heart
But it was in my body too

 

The pushing
The burning
The roughness

 

Its still there
15 years later
I am crying
I'm in pain

 

I'm drowning
I need to be rescued

But not by you
Go away
Don't touch me
Ever again
Don't you dare come near me
Or mine

 

Leave me alone
Stay out of my life

 

The pain is so sharp
So real
I'm crying
And I cannot stop

 

My home
My safe haven
Is no longer safe

 

My bed
Is no longer a place to rest

 

My body
Is no longer my own

 

My heart and soul
Are no longer whole

 

I'm dead
All I can feel is pain
All I know is hurt

 

I'm crying
I cannot stop
And will never stop

 

Guest Post: This Is My God

Guest Post by Asher Lovy

For the longest time I haven't been able to bring myself to say the name “Hashem”. It feels wrong to me, like I'm forcing myself to utter the name of a being I know to be something entirely false and contrived by people with whom I would never want to associate. Don't worry, this article isn't a renunciation of my religion. No, I believe with all my heart in "Hashem;" I just can't bring myself to utter that word, or even think it without cringing. When I need to refer to my Creator in conversation, I call Him God. That's who I feel my bond with-God. Hashem makes me want to run and hide but God makes me feel safe and loved and protected. I feel God, not Hashem, watching over me. God is who I pray to, not Hashem.

Until this morning I couldn't understand why Hashem is so objectionable to me. I thought about it because it's bothered me for the longest time; I couldn't say the name of my God without feeling dirty; I've really felt guilty about it. I thought about situations in which I would be inclined to discuss Hashem and, for the most part, they're all with people who use Hashem to their own advantage. People discussing the "kids at risk" crisis, or the latest "falsely accused rebbi" or hateful discussions about how gay people are the scum of the earth and intend to destroy us one male sexual encounter at a time.

I realized that any time I have ever been spoken to about Hashem, barring a few exceptions, it's been a discussion I wanted to run away from, with a person I wanted to berate for their ignorance. They were twisting my God into something so horrible that I can't even say His name as it is accepted in my religious circles. Hashem is a disgusting idea to me because the people who claim to worship Him and embrace His law made their idea of Him so reprehensible.  

God, though...God is entirely my own construct. No one refers to God by that name in my community. In fact, most find it a bit uncomfortable when I do. But God is my understanding of my chosen deity and religion. God is someone who loves me, protects me, and gives me a better way to live my life. God is something I want to be closer to. God is something I can work toward. God is the deity of my bible, the savior of my nation, Hashem just makes me cringe.

Someone once asked me an interesting question: Does someone who has an easy life have less of a challenge in faith than someone who has a difficult life? As I was trying to come up with an answer, someone listening in on the conversation interjected and said “It’s two sides of the same challenge.” On the one hand, the person who has a hard life is confronted with so much evil and pain that he may lose sight more easily of God, because the God he knew and loved seems so heartbreakingly absent. On the other hand, The person who has an easy life never has to confront the question of God’s existence because, in a sense, he never really needs God for anything. God is incidental in His life, and, therefore, he may forget that God even exists and is the Master of Creation.

I had a hard life. Have a hard life. I’m only 21. I’m having a hard life. My mother abused me, physically and emotionally, for years. My grandmother tried to hold things together and keep the peace, but eventually she fell into her own depression. Life went to hell. We had money but no way to access it because my grandmother needed to sign the checks and she was, effectively, catatonic. I was a high school kid, suffering through my abuse, not sure how I would pay for food or clothes, never feeling safe because my grandmother could no longer protect me.

At first I cursed Hashem. I cursed Him for the life I had been promised by all my rabbis and teachers, and the life He had given me; I cursed Him for letting my abuser go on unchecked, as she pleased, while my grandmother and I suffered; I cursed Him for the things I had to do in order to live day to day; I cursed Him for not just taking my life and making it all end. Then I prayed. Every day, with tears in my eyes, I prayed, begged Hashem to help me. I stopped going out very much because I didn't want people to see me crying.

I begged my family to help; some of them knew what was going on, but for one reason or another, always had more pity for my mother than for me. My grades plummeted, and I started skipping school and staying home, online, where my real friends were. My family told me that I had to go to yeshiva and gave me plenty of rebuke for my "sins”. They seemed to think that if only I would be the perfect yeshiva boy they had envisioned, my life would somehow perfect itself.

All I saw were people who knew, but did nothing-who would judge only me, and focus on my spiritual shortcomings, rather than help end my abuse and help me heal. Hashem wasn't there for me, and those who worship in His name only used Him to make me feel worthless and guilty. Regardless of what I needed to do to survive, it always seemed contrary to what they believed Hashem wanted. If I skipped school in order to earn money so I could pay for things like food and clothing, things that most teenagers have provided for them, I was sinning. I was expected to conform to everyone else’s norms even though my life was falling to pieces. All this in the name of Hashem. This wasn't the life I had been promised; this wasn't the Hashem I had been told about. I stopped believing in that deity.

For a while I had no god. I tried finding proof for the existence of the one I'd abandoned, proof that he had never existed, or proof of some other truth entirely. The more I searched the more I realized I would never find proof: it always came down to faith. I examined my life and the course it had taken, and I couldn't deny the hand of some intervening being. Hashem and His worshippers had never helped me, but there were those who did, and situations which somehow managed to work in my favour that I couldn't explain logically. I had to finally admit that something was intervening, some sort of deity, but which one?

I started learning more about this deity I had once known as Hashem but now he seemed different, he seemed more like the God I could connect to rather than the Hashem which I felt so removed from. I began to understand His law, His will, the way in which he governs our world, His mercy, His judgement, His anger and kindness. I still wasn't seeing His plan as ultimately good, but at least I could begin to understand the rules-the method to His madness.

This deity I was getting to know needed a name. He was the god of the Judaism that I had accepted, but the feel of Him, and of my understanding of Him, was so radically different from the way I felt and understood Hashem that I couldn't refer to Him by that name any longer. Hashem to me was synonymous with unfettered, blind, zeal, to the point where it superseded His actual will. I named Him God. I still can't say Hashem without cringing, but I am an Orthodox Jew and I love God, because he is the God I chose, instead of being forced to accept. His law is the law I embraced, not the laws that had previously been imposed on me. He is, in every sense, my God.

A Survivor's Prayer

There was a time in my life

Not too long ago

When I protected you

And before that 

For so very long

I thought I must admire  you

That you were deserving of my respect

They said you were golden

So I must have been to blame

We are a family

Families stick together

But they neglected to mention

Families don't abuse

Families don't rape

Families don't destroy

Families don't threaten

But you did

You hurt me

You are hurting me

You act so haughty

As if you have never done wrong

You wear the garb

As if its a shield

You surround yourself with deniers

So you will never be exposed

You seem to have forgotten

That there is a God

A God who knows

A God who never forgets

You don't seem to care or be bothered

By the burden on your soul

Of the abuse you inflicted on me

You live a carefree existence

While I twist and turn in pain

Every single day

My soul will never be pure

My heart will never be whole

My nights will never be restful

My days will never be peaceful

I have learned to live a half a life

To make do with what's left of me

Will the day ever come

When the tables will be turned

When you will fear me

When you will beg for my forgiveness

I long for that day

Yet I dread that time

What will I say

What will I do

How will I feel

Only time will tell

All I can do is pray

And hope

And dream

That I am filled with peace

And acceptance

And love

Please God.

Voices

There's voices in my head

Voices in my heart

Speaking back and forth

Telling me to stop

Don't even attempt to try

Success is not for you

You're a mess

A loser

A failure

You'll never make it work

You never could make it work

They speak to me constantly

At all hours of the day

They make themselves available

Morning and night

But stop and listen quietly

You'll hear the voices

They're the voices of my abusers

Trying to shut me down

Not giving me a chance

To spread my wings and fly

To be free of their control

To feel the freedom

And get stronger and louder

I need to learn

To be aware

That the sound of the voices

The origin of the voices

Is unhealthy

Its paralyzing

Not just stunting my growth

But shrinking me

Making me less of a person

But I can quiet these voices

I'm a survivor

I hear louder, stronger voices

Encouraging me

Pushing me

Elevating me

To reach new levels

Achieve greater goals

And strengthen my very being

After all, I'm a survivor

A fighter

A warrior

You can never bring me down

For I am incredible

Take Away The Pain

Take away the pain

With the slash of a knife

Take away the pain

With a shot of booze

Take away the pain

With a swipe of a credit card

Take away the pain

With a puff of weed

Take away the pain

With sharp pangs of hunger

Take away the pain

With a handful of pills

Take away the pain

One stormy night, on a slippery road

Please, just take away the pain!

I need to feel better

I need to forget

And be free once again

To a time when life was good

Life was sweet

I controlled my own

Now I am trying to return to those days

Soothe my troubled soul

And take away the pain once and for all

Dreams

I'm laying on the ground

Staring up into space

Focusing on that little crack in the paint

I know he's still there

I feel the pain, feel the pressure

But in my head, I am somewhere else

In a faraway land

Where I don't live in fear

Where I can sleep in peace

And play silly games

Like all the other little girls

He is not allowed in this land

For only good people can enter

There are no scary monsters

No big boys who tell me its ok

When they touch my little body

Or else it won't be good

They'll hurt me if I tell

Kill me if I tell

And no one will believe me

But in this faraway land in my head

The sun is always shining

The sky never turns to night

The games and fun never get boring

There are rainbows and unicorns

And everything sparkles and shines

Tears are forbidden, but who needs to cry anyways

Everywhere you go,  you hear laughter

The joyful sounds of innocence and youth

Children playing without a care in the world

But alas, my dream remains a dream

Elusive; surely lost

Children continue to cry

The pain doesn't stop

Oh please, let's make my dream a reality

For we should not have to dream

About a life we all deserve