my therapist asks where I feel my pain

i answer, “the kitchen,” she says, “no”

and presses, “where inside your body”

i shrug and show my emptiness

i can’t fix the anxious folds of my fear

infernal shame-able thoughts of dis-ease

i’m stuck as a child, feet in concrete

yet act a woman who plays her role

because acting fine runs in my bloodline

a pitted warpath of grinning grimaces

as i swallow both cock and bull stories

reckoning how to just get-by-survive

while i peer into the abyss of abuse

for crying out loud epiphanies

to foil traitors and foul perpetrators

to maybe place my feet upon the ground

but trip mole-eyed over my own longing

feeling my way bare in ragged blindfold

until i spied my faux “safe” life in stasis

like rank leftovers in stained Tupperware