after a dream where i couldn't say no

I was an
I-negated self:
my body the medium of
artists who
drove instruments into my legs,
fondled me like clay
then burnt me through to hold my shape
my voice driven to my gut, throat packed
with tracks - quiet laughs and
empty conversations with girls
I might have loved. and when my mouth
was visited by a fleshy worm
i kept it shut and closed my eyes
and lay me back
a statue of a lovely sleeping naked lady
or a lonely man's doll.

i had a dream where a woman demanded
"did he tell you the lie? did he tell you the worst lie?"

My growing up was no-less,
stripped to silence,
but it rattled in my belly and
rose like a gulping scream against a pillow
pressed to my face and now
I bellow! now
I wail! now I
guffaw!

some days the pebbles lying in the sun like dead fish, smoothened
down by the beating waves
will scorch the feet of those who walk on them

and one day we won't be pebbles but mountains, strong and firm and full of
echoes of words we could never say before.