Poeaxtry's Prism

Spell. Stone. & Sparks that Ignite Change

Tag: childhood trauma

  • A Letter I will never send.

    A Letter I will never send.

    Personality:

    A poem about how somethings you do not grow out of.

    I am 33 

    Ohhhh no I am a grown man 

    & I never stopped writing poetry 

    about how much 

    My god damn dad sucks.

    Sorry kids sometimes 

    It’s just the way it is. 

    Some of us are cool enough 

    to keep the angst as our 

    entire personality. 

    The letter:

    Jake ,

    I’ve spent a lifetime waiting for you. Waiting on moms or grandmas porch until one of the two of them would no longer let me wait. Friday nights, dressed and ready, because you said you were coming. Then Saturday. Then Sunday. The same cycle of hope and disappointment that carved itself into my developing brain until doctors gave it a name: Borderline Personality Disorder. A condition born from abandonment between ages 5-17. A condition you created on your own with every promise broken.

    What’s my middle name? My second middle name? When’s my birthday? How old am I? What city do I live in? These aren’t trick questions – they’re the most basic facts about your child that you’ve never bothered to hold onto.

    I remember who wasn’t there when I broke bones, hit my first grand-slam, every time I was sick or sad. I remember who didn’t answer calls for days. I remember throwing fits, screaming and crying for you while my mother held me. I remember being used as your detective, held up to ex-girlfriends’ windows to report back who was inside. I remember your siblings giving me presents “from you” – but if they were truly from you, why didn’t you come too?

    Don’t forget Todd was always a savage – that’s why he caught you following him and mom and you stood on the bar and told everyone you were a pussy so you didn’t take that loss too” He always was my dad and it wasn’t ever you. And that’s why I called you dad 2 to your face, and there was nothing you could do.

    I remember a magistrate threatening my mom with jail if she didn’t get me to you, and I agreed because I didn’t want to hurt her. But at your house, I was always an outcast. I remember going to side jobs with you when I could because your wife was abusing me. I remember crying for you so many times, wrecking my mom’s house because I couldn’t understand: why didn’t you want a relationship with me like you had with your other kids?

    You had court-ordered visitation days set -up by you and still didn’t show up. That isn’t my mother’s fault. Whatever my mother did to you should have had no effect on your relationship with me. Yet you’ve spent years trying to blame her, as if I haven’t been an adult making my own choices for the last 14 years.

    I smoked weed in high school and you treated me like I was on crack, but when Matthew did the same thing, you had no problem with it. I was diagnosed with ADHD and you said it was “all BS” and my mom was crazy, but when Jacob had the same diagnosis, you accepted it without question.

    Remember when I had nowhere to go with your almost 2-year-old grandson? You told me it was “time to stretch my wings and leave the nest.” So at 18, a high school dropout with no license and no help, I gave up my rights to my son. Yet somehow Jason still lives with you and Jessica (with her kids) too? I guess even they trump me and your grandkid.

    I’ve watched you effortlessly try for everyone but me. I’ve seen your step-daughter share posts about what an awesome father you are to her. I’ve watched you accept your step-kids with open arms while shutting the door on me. What was wrong with me that made me so unwelcome when everyone else found a place in your life?

    You let your wife beat me . You let my step-cousin sexually assault me on Christmas Eve. You bribed me with car rides because you knew I just wanted to spend time with you, then you’d disappear for months.

    I didn’t choose you to be my dad, but you chose to have me. If you didn’t want the responsibility, you should have signed your rights away instead of keeping me hanging on, hoping you’d eventually show up consistently. You poked a whole in a condom for all of this?

    I don’t want your money. I don’t want your excuses. I don’t even want your apology anymore. What I wanted was a father who showed up, who knew me, who protected me, who made me feel like I mattered as much as your other children.

    That ship has sailed. I got to meet and know the parent who was there for me. I don’t have any desire to be around a deadbeat who doesn’t even know what city I live in.

    One day you might regret never actually knowing me. Or maybe you won’t. Either way, I’m done waiting by the window.

    Your oldest son.

    Oh yea and dad P.S.

    I’d let you go to the worst nursing home in the world before I ever thought to help you.

    Oldest son:

    A poem about how one transgender man grew up to be the man he wished would have raised him, but own his own.

    Meanwhile, I am thirty three,

    One would assume it’s about time I get over my chronic case of 

    Teenage angst. 

    I am not even sure if I  could 

    Call it that, anymore. 

    Pick your face up off the floor 

    Your oldest so became a man

    And 

    You never had to hold my hand 

    I wasn’t potty training until  9 

    You never had to lie about my 

    Age to hide the statutory 

    Rape

    But

    I would say that I hate you 

    add I do 

    Repeat that pretty frequently

    It’s easier than explaining the

    Nothingness I feel  when it

    Comes to you

     

    I  won’t let anymore of the  

    Daughter you never got to knows

    Tears fall out of your oldest 

    sons eyes

    They aren’t mine to cry. 

    In high school I struggled 

    When the numb feeling would 

    Overcome me 

    And everything. 

    For once I feel nothing, and I don’t

    Want to feel anything. 

    It’s comforting. 

    Back then

    I did not yet discover 

    My brain had the ick 

    And it was you that 

    Made me 

    S

    I

    C

    K

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  • “You Make Me Sick” Spoken Word on Trauma, Transition, and Grief

    “You Make Me Sick” Spoken Word on Trauma, Transition, and Grief

    “You make me sick”

    An original poem by : Axton N.O. Mitchell

    @poeaxtry_

    I mean I am thirty three, 

    One would assume it’s about time I get over my chronic case of 

    Teenage angst. 

    I am not even sure if I could 

    Call it that, anymore. 

    Pick your face up off the floor 

    Your oldest so became a man

    And 

    You never had to hold my hand 

    I wasn’t potty training until 9 

    You never had to lie about my 

    Age to hide the statutory 

    Rape

    But

    I would say that I hate you 

    and I do 

    Repeat that pretty frequently

    It’s easier than explaining the

    Nothingness I feel  when it

    Comes to you

     

    I  won’t let anymore of the  

    Daughter you never got to knows

    Tears fall out of your oldest 

    sons eyes

    They aren’t mine to cry. 

    In high school I struggled 

    When the numb feeling would 

    Overcome me 

    And everything. 

    For once I feel nothing, and I don’t

    Want to feel anything. 

    It’s comforting. 

    Back then

    I did not yet discover 

    My brain had the ick 

    And it was you that 

    Made me 

    S

    I

    C

    K

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  • Unseen. Growing Up Invisible and Not Being Heard.

    Unseen. Growing Up Invisible and Not Being Heard.

    The prompt I saw on threads was to write about the first time you felt completely unseen:

    Life as a kid

    As a child, I used to insist I was a boy. I did not insist in a loud, rebellious way. I did so in that quiet, matter-of-fact voice kids use when they are just telling the truth. I felt like I was the only boy in a lineup of girls. At least, that’s how it felt whenever someone corrected me. They laughed and said, “You’ll grow out of it.” But I never did. I only grew into it… into me.

    I ran with the boys, scraped my knees with them, played rough and loud and honest. We climbed trees like they held all the answers and built forts with sticks and secrets. Those early years were golden, before the world came in with its rules about what belonged to whom. I didn’t notice at first. Not until the divide came. The boys started pulling away. Birthday parties became gendered. Sleepovers stopped. Sports teams split. The invitations disappeared one by one like leaves falling off a tree I thought was evergreen.

    The Change

    That was the first time I felt completely unseen. Not because no one was looking at me, but because no one was seeing me. They were seeing who they decided I was.

    I didn’t have the words for what I was yet. I just had the ache. I remember looking in the mirror. I tried to figure out where the boy had gone. I wondered if he’d ever been there at all. Society had given me a body and a name, and neither fit right. I had to carry both like a costume I couldn’t take off.

    Losing those friendships was like being exiled from a country I thought was mine. And what’s worse, it was a silent exile. No goodbyes. Just distance. Just a shift. Just the sense that I had broken some unspoken rule.

    Fast-Fwd to Now

    Now, years later, I know better. I know who I am. But that was the beginning. That moment was the first real grief. The first rupture. The first time I felt the sharp sting of being unseen because I was trying to be seen for real.

    Axton Mitchell age 5 preschool photos 1996
    Axton Mitchell age 5 pre school
    Axton shirtless in the pool holding a yellow vape. With his sister in the background, caught in a moment that makes it look like she can't swim
    Axton Mitchell Age 33

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  • How My Father’s Absence Taught Me to Be Present: A Story of Survival and Impact

    How My Father’s Absence Taught Me to Be Present: A Story of Survival and Impact

    Share a story about someone who had a positive impact on your life.

    It wasn’t the kind of impact most people celebrate, but it changed everything about whom I became. My dad taught me about boundaries by constantly violating them. He’d call and say he was coming to see me. “Be ready,” he’d say. I’d sit there, bag packed, watching the window all weekend. And most of the time… he never showed.


    He never paid child support. Never helped. Not financially, not emotionally. But he always made sure I knew what disappointment felt like, like it was his signature on my childhood.


    And still, in a strange way, he taught me.
    Because of him, I became the kind of person who honors their word. Who shows up. Who doesn’t use love as bait or trust as a trick. I am fiercely in tune with my own boundaries because I know what it’s like when no one respects them.


    He taught me who I’d never be especially as a man.
    He showed me that masculinity built on control and silence will always collapse. Mine is built on presence, softness, and honesty. I know that real strength means protecting others from the kind of pain I lived through.
    So yeah… maybe that’s a kind of impact. Maybe even a gift. Just one I wrapped myself in survival.

    links journal poem

  • He Raped Me on Christmas: A Journal Entry from Age 12

    He Raped Me on Christmas: A Journal Entry from Age 12

    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_

    Links journal