Congratulations to our Third Place winner for the Hope and Healing Poetry Prize! Read the Poem below:
Fed to the Vultures at 4 by anonymous
The darkness lifts, light enters, and the cycle repeats. But in my
case, destiny forgot the righteous way to deal its cards. I was
dealt jokers for the first quarter.
The darkness never lifted.
My father thinks my life is crumpled
by my wasteful ways.
He delivered me to a peaceful land – scoffing,
unable to admit he sent his resignation letter straight after.
His cup is too full of injustices from the war in Ceylon
to hold mine.
He will not tell you
why my bladder could not be controlled even at 5.
My earliest memories are tangled:
learning to ride a bike with training wheels
or lying frozen under the gaze of an eighteen-year-old cousin.
He saw my plump, childish body as prey.
I lay discarded like a doll,
dignity pooled at my ankles,
my mind clawing for escape.
“Let me go,” I said.
“There’s a ghost outside,” he replied.
Was there a ghost? I didn’t know.
My mother chose blindness over defiance.
For her, confronting injustice
was never worth losing her pretend parties with the in-laws. She wasn’t cruel, I tell myself.
Just helpless -
a woman trapped in a man’s world.
In Sri Lanka, speaking out
could mean being disowned,
going hungry, even starving.
I know, I know -
I make meek excuses
to make loving the woman who failed me bearable.
My uncle defended his son with ease,
like it was dress rehearsal.
Medical care for me
could mean prison for him.
His cure: coconut oil and turmeric powder
pressed into the wounds.
But what about my amygdala –
assaulted before the hippocampus
had even finished her training to witness the crime? I will spend my life
searching fragments in my brain
for why no soap could ever clear my skin.
I was four years old.
That night – the first and last time I lucid-dreamed
– a woman’s voice,
a future doctor’s voice,
told me there was no ghost.
I turned around.
The ghost evaporated with a solemn smile.
I would never be tricked again.
I had come home to myself.
