What Goes Up Must Come Down
Unraveling outrage, familial echoes, and the perilous comfort of self-destruction.
Welcome, new subscribers! This poem is an excerpt from my book-in-progress, Strange Woman. It’s part memoir, part user manual, part ancestral haunting. This project documents my journey after surviving sexual assault by a doctor…who is still practicing, by the way.
This poem is about the inheritance of suppression, anger, and self-sabotage.
It’s about how writing helps me transmute what was never safe to speak aloud. And it’s about the terrifying thrill of looking in the mirror and seeing your father's rage, your family’s patterns, and the bottom of your own soul… and breathing through it.
My notes, below.
I write like a rollercoaster, what goes up must come down I write with every intention to disclose my feelings about this town Sit straight forward Button up Close one eye And hold that clutch Don’t be a slut I write like my father lives in every memory, now get it out. Alchemize to give it space before I disintegrate. I’ll show you how. I write autobiographical, I tell on my self. I spit it out. He stuffed it down. I wonder how he’s doing now. I write about the Wild West. Protect yourself. You’ll suffer less. My rage is facing in the mirror, the man who made me. Crystal clear. I shoot to kill. I’m bombs away. I’m a compound chemical. I have no brakes. I’d explode, but then I’d have no case, they’d shake their heads. It’s fucked. My rage. I’m scraping out the darkest corners of my soul in voice memos. I want it darker, before I suppress the hardest. The shame: my target. He taught me how to dive for snakes. I taught him how to feel my rage. My kink is feeling like I’m being squeezed by what is hunting me. I love to feel the bottom drop. Every time I get knocked out, the waking up, it feels so good. My stomach flops. God, what the fuck. This rollercoaster feels so right, Intoxicating as I side eye my inheritance– The urge to destroy my life.
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Strange Woman is more than a book. It’s a rebellion. A reclamation. A hand reaching out in the dark.
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