Gods, Monsters, and Complex PTSD

Image: “Contradictions of Being” by Neena Sethia. “Gods, Monsters, and Complex PTSD” was written by Elizabeth Train-Brown for Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge, May 2021, and selected as the Artist’s Choice.
I feel unraveled
I feel like scripture
I feel like the words of prophets
torn apart
translated
retranslated
rewritten
spread to countries that don’t care
what I have to say.
 
I feel like taking out the middle man
taking out the writer
the pen
the page
burrowing my face through the undergrowth
slithering through the cracks
of a confession booth
and whispering my sins
through a mouthful of leaves.
 
I feel like when someone drops a book
in a bath
and a touch of everything written in me
circles
the
drain
you can dry me
shake your bathwater from my spine
but I will never be the same
and you will always know the difference.
 
I feel like a woman’s words
    in a man’s book.
There
but in his voice.
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