Category: Journal Entry

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“I still carry the sound of your promises that never made it past your teeth.”

-Axton N.O. Mitchell

Hi Jake.

I know I swore I let go of all this shit.
All of you.
But I still carry the sound of promises that never made it past your teeth.

Dad
the disappearing act that always came with excuses,
the birthdays you ghosted like it was a tradition.
The ball games, the plays, the sick days, you’d call for them all big or small.
I carry the echo of your words:
I’ll be there this time.
You never were.

I miss you Momma!

I carry the way Mom said my name
right before everything stopped.
Eight days before I turned 30, my sisters both not even 21. She stopped existing in a world that never deserved her.
I still talk to her like she can hear me.
They did teach us energy gets replaced it never leaves.
Maybe that’s the part I haven’t let go of.
I doubt I have let go of much but her physically.
Maybe that’s the part I never should let go.
I won’t. I can’t let more of her slip away. She falls through the cracks between my fingers as I pretend. I was definitely not crying again. Not that anyone asked.

I’m the Problem, so They must be the Reason.

I carry the weight of being told I make people miserable,
like I’m a curse wrapped in skin.
The way an ex said I’d ruin everything I touched the opposite of that king Midas, I think. I don’t remember, but as a kid, my mom would read me a book. It was about a king who turned everything to gold.

As well as other Ex’s and other things they said they never meant to say… but still said.
Anyway, for a while, I believed them.
Because when you hear it often enough,
it doesn’t sound like abuse anymore.
It sounds like proof.

The Demons they Left behind

And honestly, if I’m being real, it still does when the demon bpd shows his ass. It’s way further apart than it was known to be in history but I’m still clearly sore in many places. I don’t like to talk directly about that shit.
It’s hard when the person you talked to the only one is located on your shelf in an urn. What a joke.
The weight of all this is sometimes enough to drown me, I fear.

Those People who left When Axton stopped Hiding

The people who said they loved me
until I came-out, found me, or loved me.
I chose a name that fit, and they couldn’t try to call me it.
I started to look like someone they hadn’t imagined. So they didn’t come around and get used to me as I changed. They decided it was better to walk away.

I carry the silence that followed coming out,
the way their love had fine print and conditions. That I didn’t see until I bled through it, of fucking course.
They loved the version of me I had to bury.
But I didn’t die with her, she was always a shield for a boy too weak to exist. You just knew him by a different name and set of pronouns.

I became something more. I was lonelier at first. Fresh out of my shell. I found my tribe, and the more, I grow the louder I am about equality for everyone.
That scares them,
so, it is theirs to hold.

I’ve got enough of my own weight to carry.
And I do.
Every damn day. I carry all the things I said I had burned.
The truth is I just folded them up,
pressed them behind my ribs like a sad collection.
I still read those letters sometimes.
They still sting.
And I can’t do a thing to stop them from opening.

“Every damn day, I carry all the things I said I had burned. I still read those letters sometimes.”

-Axton N.O. Mitchell

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Journal entry number 1

The moment I started writing for survival is not one that would be difficult to pinpoint, especially if you know my story well.
I’m not sure if I can even claim that story as my own. It was always more Arielle’s to tell; the kid experienced the hell of living through it.
It is simply a memory we share. I no longer carry the trauma it produced.

Let me paint you a picture: I was in 7th grade, around the age of twelve, a straight A student who loved
sports, reading, chorus, and writing both short stories and poetry. I had just started hearing the murmurs in the halls, that boy this and this boy that. I had to hold my metaphorical vomit back. When did this happen? We want to ogle all the boys, since when? Not I, and then I realized my best friend and her thighs. This is not normal, and I am already weird so we can just pretend, go along with the boy trend. Fast Foward 7th grade Christmas break. This is the last place for you to turn around before the moment that changed me, and my reasoning for creating art through words.

Okay one of us is at least still here…
I had to go to the house of my enemy for most of the break. I remember feeling defeated. My mom could not stop
the judge from sending me to what I mistakenly thought was the worst possible layer of hell. A bitch for a father who leaves me on porches for days and days, each weekend, each year (check out my poem still) or just lies to my face either way he’s more than know for abandoning me. Jake the fucking snake. Or the stepmom straight out of R.L. Stein. But they were not even close to the worst, and I would soon learn. I packed my bags and headed to Jakes apartment for what was supposed to be a few weeks visit.

For once I really wish my evil stepmother was there this night and he had just lied about their goodbyes.
We went to Uncle Heath’s the evil stepmother’s brother and somehow snake’s best friend. He had a wife, a bug infested house, and a bunch of dirt covered kids. The worst thing in the house was not there because of him. Enter the devil himself at just 17 with teeth sticking horizontally out of the vile thing known as his mouth.
He’d touch me under the table with his toes through my pants in the kitchen, while his mom bragged about his large member claiming it put her husbands to shame. I tried and tried to tell, pinch me with his toes until i was quiet from fear. Would hold me down as soon as the adults left out of there. He would touch me all over under my clothes, always stopping before “taking it too far” as if he hadn’t already with a child my age, as an almost man.

I wish I could say that was the end. I begged and begged every time to not have to go to Heath’s but hadn’t told on him. He’d growl at me and threaten to end what life I did have. Jake was usually pretty smart on the pervy way some guy’s minds work…I wonder why. anyway, he’d always tell the devil no when he would ask to stay the night with me. Until that Christmas Eve. The Devil asked and my fucking “dad” said yes knowing it was only us two and now three so my brothers wouldn’t be there to hear anything. My dad got us to his apartment building told devil man to stay in the living room and to leave me be. Jake the snake was always good at one thing sleeping. The devi snuck in and raped me in my brother’s race car bed. I didn’t think it would ever end, he slapped me around, threatened my mother, and left out the door. Although I watched him get up, I never stopped feeling his weight crushing me.

I waited up all night for Jake to awake, and when I told him what happened He slapped me in the face, called me a whore, sent me out the door to the stoop to wait for my mom. This was Christmas day in 7th grade. I sat on the porch while it snowed and couldn’t shed a tear with my Christmas presents in piles unopened laying on the ground. For years I wish I had never said a thing. I told my mom at the age of 19. As sad as it is to say the reaction she had, the emotions, the pain finally told me everything. To my dad I never meant anything. My mom went after him of course. He lied and said I never told him, and pretended he was going to press charges all those years later, and still never did. Still closer to the man who raped his daughter than he ever was to her.

This story gets a happy ending finally.
The devil went back to hell where he should have always stayed.
And my brother thinks he’s a good man, and wonders why I don’t talk to any of them.

Thank you Mr. Matthew Mitchell. I sure hope you do better to protect your daughters than supporting the likes of a rapist even in death. To circle back around I started writing to escape the vicious rape at the hands of an almost adult, who was introduced to me as my cousin. This need to escape through writing grew as did I. While the size of the things I was writing to hide from began to shrink. I may be passed a lot of feelings this used to stir but I’ll still piss on this man’s grave.

Much Love Forever to everyone but my father,
Axton N. O. Mitchell
@Poeaxtry_

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