Silent Stutterer

I remember a day
Unable to answer your questions
With your words circling around in my head.
My words
Stuck somewhere in the back of my throat
Choking, like
A stutterer
Unable even to stut.
Was that always me or
Did you corrupt me here, as
Everywhere else?
I no longer recall.
The haze of your control
Took those memories from my grasp.

Still, now, I realise
I am a silent stutterer
Unwilling to let myself even think
Of those unhappy sentences.
I know they will not come out.
To combat a demon, you need
An angel
Or so I’ve heard.
Catching the eye of someone on the bus
It hits me:
In these three years I have dropped
All pretence of being able to speak.
I wish instead
For them to speak
To me.

When he speaks
I cannot answer.
A reply does not cross my mind.

Broken now,
By your hands and words on my throat,
What do I need to do
To fix this?
Rushing against a brick wall
Will kill you before
The bricks fall down.
Better to chip at the mortar.
Without tools and
Unknowing where to find that mortar I
Wander endlessly in circles.
Your circles still.
Your crushing will.

I dream a distant day
When words flow freely as a spring
As love does from a heart unfettered, and
A child looks up to its mother who
Has beaten the worst thing to ever happen to her
And will make sure they do the same.