Poetry by Aleathia Drehmer

             ​Timo Newton-Syms CC



Teach Me to Protect Myself

At the kitchen table, I peel strips of flesh
from my chest as I lay out every avoidance
I have done in the face of abuse, long since dead.

The honesty burns more than going through the motions
of lying to myself that his hands on me didn't matter,
or his fist on my face,
or that stranger trying to take from me
                                                                          what was never his,
or the way my mother was never proud of me,
or how she never had the strength
                                        to teach me how to protect myself.

The pen moves across the page, each answer
to a question so filled with submission
that it leaves me vulnerable and crying. 

Outside the window, the rain falls in sheets
as I watch fog smoke the hills and river.
I feel small and raw and reborn for only a moment.

I want to close the book and walk away,
but more than that, I want to be whole again.

​

Aleathia Drehmer was once the editor of Durable Goods and In Between Altered States, but now spends most of her time writing novels. She has recently published poems in Fragmented Lines, South Shore Review, and Heroin Love Songs. Aleathia has upcoming work in Impspired Magazine, M 58 Poetry, Spillwords, and Cajun Mutt Press.  www.aleathiadrehmer.com

---