a Digital painting of a face in shadows colored in black and blue

In This Black of Your Night

Peter, Poetry

In this black

of

your night.

I touch you,

I smell you;

I feel your hot

breath on my cheek

when you whisper

that I am evil

that God watches

that I will surely

go

to Hell

for what you’ve

done.

I remember

and I forget

Why I’m wicked

Why I’m frightened

Why I bleed in pain.

So I lay here,

in this darkness,

in this fear,

in this black

of

your night.

First posted 10/2015

(C) Rob Goldstein 2015-2018 All Rights Reserved


 

 

 

 

46 thoughts on “In This Black of Your Night”

    1. To be honest when I read this poem I don’t ‘feel’ the content. What I see is the form and structure of the poem and what I feel is the rhythm of the line. There’s a disconnect between the part of my brain that is responding to you and the part that wrote the poem. I don’t feel the pain in the poem. 🙂

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      1. My blog for some reason isn’t letting me comment on other blogs right now. It just says “retry” but I wanted to 1 thank you for this comment and then 2. Say that I read the picture blog you just wrote.
        If I don’t look at myself, I know me. I feel me. I sense me I am aware of me if I look at pictures it is someone that I often do not recognize. At first I thought it was that I cut all my hair of when it broke off due to the disease ( I did it to liberate myself from society’s pressure for women to have long hair and from my mother who constantly critiqued my hair my entire life) but then I just saw myself in the picture and would not see the me that I felt. There is a disconnect sometimes and I believe, if I my share my honest truth here with you that our appearance has no way of showing our heart, our intentions, our love, our empathy, our growth and so maybe, in some ways, because of that, we will never fully recognize ourselves in a picture. Just a thought I wanted to share

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      2. Thanks Bethany. The literature on dissociative disorders mentions this problem of not recognizing the self. There’s an interesting post on this here:

        It is common for survivors of child abuse to struggle with looking in the mirror. There are many different reasons and many different reactions.

        For example, a woman abused by her mother or a man abused by his father often struggles with looking in the mirror because, instead of seeing their own reflection, they see their abuser looking back at them. This is particularly a problem for any child abuse survivor who objectively physically resembles the abuser. I am grateful that I resemble my father’s side of the family since my mother was the abuser. However, as I get older, I physically resemble my paternal grandmother more and more, which is jarring. I will sometimes see her in the mirror instead of myself.

        Also, anyone with dissociative identity disorder (DID) or other dissociative states can be taken aback when a child part looks in the mirror and sees an adult woman or man looking back in the reflection. Because that part of yourself is still “stuck” at age 6 or whatever, seeing an adult face in the mirror can be very disconcerting.

        Not Recognizing Self in Mirror after Child Abuse

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