Warrior Woman or Withdrawn Waif (standard:poetry, 464 words)
Author: Lori	Added: Feb 16 2012	Views/Reads: 2335/1567	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
The fourth poem in my child abuse series. Which one is the woman? Is she now a warrior woman? Or does she remain a withdrawn waif?

Warrior Woman or Withdrawn Waif 

Looks can be deceiving. 

Especially if you don't look passed the mask. 

Someone could appear as weak as a baby. 

Or as strong as a steel cask. 

Throw in the past and the lines become blurred. 

You'd never know by looking in her eyes 

that she's a survivor of child sexual abuse. 

Or that it's what happened after she denies. 

~ 

She was eleven when the abuse stopped. 

Life was supposed to return to normal. 

Except in her twisted, confused mind 

she thought she'd get a white flowing formal. 

How could he not love her? 

She'd done everything he wanted. 

What did it matter they'd been caught? 

By him she was haunted. 

~ 

That wasn't the icing on the cake. 

By then her father had left her. 

Taken first by divorce. 

Then killed by a man who's speech was slurred. 

He didn't get to see the woman when she matured. 

Didn't get to see the teen she'd become. 

And didn't know what the child had endured. 

~ 

The combination of both traumas 

had the budding adolescent spinning. 

She found ways of escaping. 

Food, drugs, alcohol was just the beginning. 

Her mission was to make herself unattractive. 

Gained thirty pounds that first Summer. 

Started flirting with older men 

and took on the persona of someone dumber. 

~ 

Nothing worked as well as food. 

It became her constant companion. 


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