Written by Allison Fradkin
Content Warning: Domestic violence
You know something?
I got sand.
That’s why I came to the beach.
I heard they were running low. Heh.
Speaking of hearing things,
I wish I had some tunes.
That tribute to transformation, “I Am Changing,”
would really hit the spot right now.
Well, not the sore spot.
But I don’t mind listening to the sound of my own voice.
I never really noticed it before, but it’s . . . present.
Pleasant. Much more mellifluous
than something off of your Greatest Hits album,
which includes such scintillating singles as
“Diss You Much,”
“Proud Marry in Haste, Repent at Leisure,”
and the pièce de no résistance,
“You Can’t Stop the Beatdown.”
Except I can. I did.
I stopped the beatdown.
You knew my motto:
Batterer up, three strikes I’m out.
You’ll never have the pleasure of seeing me cry anymore.
Or the pain of seeing me smile.
In fact, you won’t see me any kind of way, ever again.
See, you thought our song went:
I’m tellin’ you from the start
I can’t be torn apart from my guy.
But see, that is unapologetically uninspiring.
So on my album, the song goes:
I’m tellin’ you from the start
I can’t be torn apart by my guy.
I know the first time leaving is the hardest—
first is the worst and all that—
but once you go black-and-blue,
you——I——never go back.
So you might think that this is one of those
“If at first you don’t succeed,
try, try again” initiatives,
that they call it escapism because
it’s nothing but a fantasy.
But I know something you don’t:
I can take the y off “emergency”
and put an e there instead,
and then I’ve earned
a resurgence of emergence.
Words to live by.
Which is why I’m going to beat the odds
my first time out.
Well, maybe not beat ’em,
but overcome just sounds so
underwhelming.
I got guts for days.
Weeks, months, and beyond.
I can’t take all the credit for my courage though.
Got to give gratitude to Sofia
—from The Color Purple,
not The Golden Girls.
Her song “Hell No,”
about refusing
to be cruising
for a bruising,
is what got me to make tracks in the first place.
A person hears something often enough,
she starts to believe it.
She starts to repeat it. Out loud.
I’d croon, you’d cringe—and criticize:
I know why the caged bird sings.
She’s a Maya Ange-loser.
Come on now, don’t pout.
You know I’m only teasing,
and still I get a rise out of you.
And what did I ever get out of you?
Nothing but another bouquet of your
sorry-not-sorry-ass flowers,
the kind perfect for playing
that time-honored game of
He Shoves Me, He Shoves Me Not.
That’s right—I’m playing games without you,
and guess what?
I can identify ’em.
None of that baseless accusation B.S.
What games was I ever playing with you, huh?
Trouble?
Aggravation?
Pac-Man?
Well, since you neglected to specify,
I picked my own game to play:
Pack-Your-Bags-and-Leave-That-Man,
where every woman’s a winner.
Now that’s something to sing about:
He’s got no power
No power no more
Over me.
Formerly sung by The Exciters,
presently sung by The Exiters.
When did I get to be so
infuriatingly inspirational?
Must be when I realized that
I am the wind beneath my
uncaged wings, that
underneath the coat of war paint
I applied to the bruises
was a brave face
just waiting to be put on.
Someday, even when those bruises
are gone but not forgotten,
they’ll still be souvenirs of survival,
and they’ll still be a sore spot.
But now that I’m no longer under
your skin, your thumb, or your spell,
I can spell that word a little differently:
s-o-a-r.
Hell yes.
.
Allison Fradkin (she/her) delights in creating poetry, prose, and plays that (sur)pass the Bechdel Test. Her work has been published in Brown Bag, Vita & the Woolf, Snowflake Magazine, Gnashing Teeth, Sweet Tea Literary Magazine, Quill & Echo, Pastel Serenity, Spray Paint Magazine, Synkroniciti, New Plains Review, SHIFT, Rejoinder, and Emblazoned Soul Literary Review. Allison’s auxiliary activities include vintage shopping, volunteering, and tending to her thespian tendencies.