On Love and Time Travel (Patreon)

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This is a companion poem for the below Tales from the Pit episode: Dungeon Crawl (Feat. Ellen Swaim).  Written by Michael.

***

Because there was so much love in me

Pumped in till I was stuffed as a tick

It was a cinch to fly backwards

Soar over years on an updraft

Like a fighter jet, fueled and armed

I streaked past a courthouse, on recon

Long-range sensors locked onto

The face of a woman, a witness

Mahogany-boxed in a room of accusers

Two men at the end of her finger

I braked at an alleyway, my target

Shaming myself with the sight

Of a woman with her eyes closed tightly

Two men in the cruelest context

A young, not-yet mother—

And I had to wonder:

Did you whisper my name?

Did you know I was already with you?

It was no matter…

I fired my sidewinder missiles

With thunderclaps of love

Under mushroom clouds of affection

A nuclear payload laid waste

And exposed the scene to a light

So bright that nothing remained

Just a map of the love you gave

Grown so full it spilled over

To course through time’s arroyo

To shatter and soothe, to do

Anything it damn well wants to

There when you needed me

Impossible reflection

The Department of Corrections

Come back in time

Invincible

Didn’t you wonder:

Where you found the strength?

Whose love fueled you?

It was a mother’s love unchained

Returned to run amok.

***

 May 12, 1979 

This a poem by Ellen herself, written about the same incident shortly after it occurred. She shared it with Michael after she read the above, and agreed to let him publish both only on the  condition that he explain that she believes “rape survivors should shout it out, carry no shame,” and feel no need to hide their experiences from others.

***

Saturday night, nothing has changed

But now she hugs her kids a lot

Since they took her behind the concrete wall

And let her scream her outrage towards the sky

As she watched it blaze

Blacker and blacker in the night.


Nothing has changed

Since they let her walk away

Sore

From the concrete wall

Where they made her pay.


They each stuck a dollar in her left front pocket,

Walked her to the street

And let her go

Back into the city 

Saturday night

The bars were still open

And the street filled with lights

They let her go

And the feelings followed her

Coming on for days

Hard and slow.


Nothing is different

Since her legs stuck out

White and naked

On the dirt

Under the sky

Where she couldn’t fight

The sun still beats in daytime

And darkness

Beats at night,

And nothing lasted from it

Except for wrong and right.


Nothing has changed

From that Saturday night

Except that she watches the baby’s smile

And bathes her tired body

In its light.