von Tara |
Every time someone says that sex work is empowering,
or repeats the words sex work is work like a mantra,
a small shiver runs down my spine
and a knife is being stabbed where it hurts the most.
Not the kind of shiver that belongs to pleasure or warmth
but the cold, thin ripple that comes when an old door inside you creaks open.
I think of the places I’ve tried to seal shut.
Of the moments I almost managed to forget,
until a phrase in a stranger’s mouth brings them back,
slow and sharp, like glass rising through the soil after a long winter.
I feel as if they turn away from my pain,
laugh at it,
sell it back to the world as their fight.
They take the language of my wounds
and stitch it into their banners,
bright and clean, to make men happy,
as if it were never soaked through with shame,
as if it had never left a taste in my mouth I can’t spit out.
You all make me sick.
At that point in my life, things were far from glamorous. I lived with my girlfriend in a tiny one-room apartment, barely managing to scrape together enough for our next meal. Her alcohol and drug use ate up whatever savings we had, leaving us constantly on edge.
The arguments that erupted between us, the nights when I had to carry her home because she was completely out of it, the moments when she threw things at me in desperation when she was in withdrawal or we ran out of money again. Being trapped in a tiny bathroom, surrounded by clutter from every side. Dirt so old on the walls, no idea how it got there. That cramped space was where I remembered what it meant to hold on, to keep going even when hope felt out of reach. How we reconciled in the ruins of her drunken nights and talked about the wounds inflicted on us by the light of a bottle stuck in a beer glass. I remember it clearly because they dug deep. I loved her deeply, despite everything. And I would have done anything to make her happy again. Anything to give us the life I thought we both deserved.
And how she yelled at me to bring in more money… Whatever, we just need more money now.
I don’t care about it. We need it now.
It in exact that moment in that bathroom I took the decision to do it again. The first time was much earlier, so early that I don’t wanna have to think about it once again. For now.
I remember that I felt like a puppet jerked along by tangled strings, my body moving without permission, caught somewhere between numbness and almost forgotten habit. Exhaustion not just physical; it seeped into my bones, dulling every edge until nothing felt sharp anymore not pain, not hope, not even fear.
I was drifting through a fog where the future was invisible and present and past too heavy to carry. There was no bravery in it, no grand moment of decision just the grim reality of needing to keep moving because stopping meant facing a silence I wasn’t ready for.
Just pain.
Standing on some street corner, hoping not to be seen, waiting with that disgusting feeling in your stomach like a pig on the slaughterhouse. I still have that feeling and wake up from it in the middle of the night.
I remember all the endless discussions with the men.
No, I won’t do that.
But why not?
My heart beating so fast that sometimes I thought I would never wake up. Hands on my neck without asking. Feet on my face. It didn’t feel empowering at all.
Constantly afraid of not surviving the next few hours. Everyone talks about how women feel when they meet a man on the street at night. But how are we supposed to feel?
Tried to think beyond the walls closing in
imagining her smile like a distant light, flickering just out of reach.
The thought of bringing home a stack of bills,
like a scene playing behind glass,
detached and blurry, almost unreal.
Held onto that image,
but feels like watching someone else’s life
memory slipping through fog again,
too far away to grasp, too faint to believe.
And even then, weight pulls back,
dragging me under,
reminding me where I am.
Some say, “Maybe it’s because you’ve had trauma before?” as if the two are somehow mutually exclusive. As if it wasn’t the same for every prostitute out there. Even every woman out there.
I brought money home.
Just enough to get us through next week. But don’t forget that I was there. Let me f*ck*ng talk about it.
I hope she still thinks about that sometimes when she calls me bigot with her new friends because I say sex work isn’t work.
von Tara |
I carry the secrets with me.
Recognize their faces.
And sometimes their smell.
This remains between us.
Outwardly, I walk tall, unshaken,
my voice sharp and my hands steady.
But under my ribs, it coils,
a trembling pulse that no one can see.
Keep your mouth shut.
I press my palm there in silence,
feeling it whisper through my bones.
Even smiles and laughter cannot hide,
the world’s eyes cannot reach.
The night might bring it back,
or not,
and maybe return to what I
sought.
von Tara |
sometimes I couldn’t even see their faces, only their hands, only the way the room smelled, cheap perfume, sweat, their breath, their voices like echoes from another floor, another city, not really here, not really them, just a sound playing for me alone
others put their phones on speaker, I stayed still, listened, work, friends, trivial mishaps, sometimes it repeated, sometimes it overlapped with the squeak of shoes on the tile, the car horns below, the way the air smelled when the heater clicked on, face neutral, hands supposed to be steady but restless, one wandering at my blouse, one on the receiver, nodding, smiling, pretending, shrinking inside
Someone cried in the middle of it and I counted the seconds like stretched chewing gum, sticky, slow, slow, slow, his shoulders trembling. I sat still, shadow, sometimes he wiped tears on the bedspread, sometimes on my arm, I let it happen, counted, tick, tick, tick, sometimes imagined the clock melting into the carpet, the carpet breathing under us
Some called me by their sister’s or daughter’s name, sometimes both, sometimes a name I almost recognized, almost, and when they left I thought to follow, thought I could see their apartments, their front doors, little vestibules, carpets smelling faintly of eggs and bread from a morning that never existed, hands never meant for me, only the glimpse from the window, shiver, and still I stayed in the apartment.
I carried their secrets, sometimes smelled them, sometimes saw them in the corner of the room, hidden in the shadows of the ceiling, their faces sometimes burned into my vision when I closed my eyes, they stayed, between us, locked, I walked tall, I spoke sharp, hands steady, outwardly, but under my ribs it coiled, pulsed, whispered, kept silent, hand pressed to chest, felt it echo in bones, laughter could not hide it, smiles could not, the world could not see
Sometimes the night brought it back, sometimes it didn’t, sometimes it led me to other rooms, other men, other names, other echoes, and I followed, only in my mind, tracing footsteps on tile that wasn’t there, listening to door squeaks that were echoes of memories I didn’t want, sugar stains, half-empty coffee, the smell of old cigarettes, the small laugh I alone could hear, slipping between seconds, slipping between days
And sometimes… sometimes I could make it all disappear, all of it, just disappear, but only for a moment, and then it came back again, under ribs, under skin, in the pulse, in the whisper, always there, sometimes small, sometimes enormous, like it had no beginning, no end, only me, only shadow, only quiet, only waiting.
von Tara |
My mesh-wire carpet has woven me tight.
It once kept me warm,
laid quiet and polite.
But then it bit.
I can’t quite recall how I came to that place—
Now I’m stuck in this carpet-blue space.
Loop after loop—first legs, then waist,
The threads crept upward, slow and chaste.
What could I do?
A mesh-wire carpet feels soft, more or less,
Though the bars in the mesh can still scratch, I confess.
From down here the room looks surprisingly wide,
The white on the ceiling just slightly awry.
It’s not that bad.
My corner receives hardly any light,
But I won’t complain about that tonight.
Yesterday thirst brushed faintly past,
But the feeling, like most things it didn’t last.
I feel just fine.
I’ve been lying here now for quite some time,
Strange, how nobody asks if I’m fine.
The mesh-wire carpet is nearly a home,
In its netting, I never feel alone.
It’s comforting here.
I haven’t counted the days as they flee,
I drift and I drift through this mesh-threaded sea.
The ceiling’s white has long turned carpet-blue,
The mesh-wire threads are piercing me through.
People told me it’s a beautiful trait,
How well I endure, how I quietly wait.
Oh, dear god, it’s strange how I love
my weightless dreams
that come from above.
von Tara |
To my beloved one,
Last year, when it was snowing outside, I almost wrote to you. Wondered… Are you still
smoking on the balcony? With your half-frozen fingers, the cigarette butts in the flowerpot
that has never seen a flower? Still have your records in those milk crates you never wanted to
replace? I wonder if you still talk in your sleep. You always said those strange, half-formed
words that made no sense, and I loved every second I got to listen to it. I still think about the
apartment above the record store.
I never felt safer than up there, with you.
Wood floors full of burn marks, a fridge that hummed like an old generator, and that tiny table
that always held at least three empty bottles with a candle.
The little bookstore down the street is closed now. Phil calls sometimes, but I never dare to
go, so I make up excuses. Appointments, dentist, headaches. I can’t. And I think he can’t too. I
think he doesn’t want to live in a city where you’re no longer there either.
Overall, I’m better off now than I was back then.
Only last year I had a bad relapse.
I was close to calling you in the middle of the night. I thought it must have been like when
you called and I didn’t answer… I didn’t. My finger hovered over the phone but eventually I
put it down.
So I never told you I was pregnant. But I swear you were the first person I thought of when I
found out. The guy just pulled it off. He was not a nice man.
He leaned in the doorway, breath heavy with beer, constantly talking about money he didn’t
have.
He said women like me should be grateful. Grateful for what, I still don’t know. He didn’t
even give me any money for it; he just left. I never saw him again. Just gone.
Door slammed. Then silence. And I was thinking of your past too when I curled up in the bed.
I wonder if you never told me either. What you really did when you were late. Cried for hours
in that thought. Cursed, killed and snitched in my thoughts again.
After that, it was over for me. I’d had enough.
I sat in the bathroom for an hour, staring at the test. It was raining, I remember; the drumming
of the water against the window. Your dumb, endlessly long, pretentious names for our neverborn children immediately flashed through my mind.
It wasn’t my fault I lost that job. That last case broke me, and everything started all over
again. You must know best how it feels.
I didn’t keep it.
I couldn’t.
Sometimes I dream I did, and a child with your eyes runs down the old stairs, laughing as if
nothing between us ever broke. Then I wake up, and it’s just me.
But in this life, it wasn’t meant to be.
Anyway, after you were gone, it was pretty uncomfortable up there. Our little kingdom of
cigarette butts, with its curtained windows to the market square and the crookedly stacked
books, cold and blue.
I didn’t keep it.
I packed everything into a box and moved to the other side of the country, just like you, from
what I’ve heard.
Don’t worry, it’s somewhere completely different.
Our paths won’t cross, and old wounds won’t reopen.
I couldn’t keep any of it.
Instead, I bought a used jacket at the old secondhand shop next to our former apartment and
wore it every day like armor.
I rode the bus into nowhere, just to keep moving. Sat by the window, watching the neon signs
flare up in the shop windows across the street and die again, pretending every flicker was
some kind of answer. Pretending that moving, just moving, could mean something. I couldn’t
keep any of it.
Now I’ve got a decent job, maybe soon the job of my dreams. Dream job meaning: better
salary, meetings, emails, a coffee machine in the kitchen. I’d be over the moon if I got it. But
if you made it too… well, that’d make the whole damn galaxy spin.
Some nights I still ride that bus, nowhere in particular, letting the city roll past, thinking of
you. And if you ever find yourself in a moment like that again, wherever you are, I hope you
know I’m only a heartbeat away, no matter how many miles stretch between us, waiting to
finally take the bus for one last time into the right direction. Riding, moving, pretending it all
was good for something
