Pain

This is one of the first poems I wrote in English so my technique may be rough, the phrasing not entirely eloquent, my imagery not brilliant but it's raw and it's from the heart. I would like to dedicate this to anyone who has ever been abused, be it verbally, physically, mentally - may your heart find peace, your soul find joy and may you learn to heal...

Pain

There is no blood
Only an old scar.
No broken bones
Only shattered illusions.
The x-rays won’t
show any irregularities
and neither will
the blood tests
I have to take.

I have ten fingers
and ten toes.
Two legs and arms
and my face is
not disfigured.
I have perfect hearing
and 20/20 vision.

Yet there is a pain
of which nobody knows
because over the years
I have become a master
of hiding behind
walls of illusion, lies and
almost fraudulently pretending
that I am normal.
That it did not really happen.

I tell myself
I do not need to drink tonight.
Another lie.
At 4 a.m. I look
down another bottle of
half-empty liquor.
And when I wake up
far too late to go to work that day
I tell myself that
the fifteen hundred men
banging their sledgehammers
inside my head
is the only pain I feel.

Oh mother of all lies.

The pain is here
and it’s very real.
And you
bastard
got away with it.