Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot of discussions about what constitutes violence. I have a friend who is a professor who says, “Violence is violence,” and he says it as a way of telling his students that to use the word “violence” in a hyperbolic way can actually dampen your point. Can language be violence? I don’t know. I know I worry about hyperbole all the time in my own writing. I can recast things in my past for the sake of storytelling, make something feel dramatic, when it was actually just difficult or a challenge that I managed to rise to. I always want to make sure I’m staying true to the facts and not just letting my emotions run rampant on the page.

But it’s important to acknowledge that not all abuse is physical. So many of us have been a victim of, or a witness to, the terror and tight grip of emotional abuse whether in a personal relationship or in a public setting. How many times have I had late night discussions with friends determined to extricate themselves from a toxic relationship, only to have them return the next morning because they say “It’s really not that bad,” even if it is. What I mean to say here is that there are many ways that emotional abuse has been normalized in our relationships.

I worked with a friend once who was in a relationship that was clearly unhealthy. Everything she did was for the sake of pleasing him. He never raised his voice or lifted a finger to hurt her physically, but her life was a daily tangle of stress trying to make sure he was happy, placated, subtly soothed so he didn’t lose his temper or cause a fight. When they finally split she cried for weeks until she came in one day and said, “I’d forgotten what my mind felt like without him in it.” I swear the whole office did a dance and hugged her. She was back. She was free.

Today’s poem is a powerful portrait of the insidiousness of emotional abuse. If listening to accounts of abuse is difficult, or unhealthy for you, please feel free to skip. We will be back tomorrow with more poems.

how to make her stay
by Shauna M. Morgan

             Emotional abuse can be more insidious and have longer lasting effects than physical abuse.

tell her the new fragrance is nice but she doesn’t have to bathe in it
             assert that sarcasm is a talent

tell her that her salwar or lappa is weird and take her to the mall for khakis
             do so until she stops wearing that colorful garb

track her purchases so you can acknowledge the unseen item when she comes home
             give her an allowance and tell her it’s for the future

make sure you don’t tell her any family news that comes to you first
             pretend as if you did mention it

push away her hugs and kisses and put off sex for weeks or months
             tell her it’s her fault

refuse to let her mother in the birthing room
             say it’s because you love her and want to share the moment privately

interrogate everything she does, especially with the newborns
             disregard when she notes that you never read the baby books

move to the guestroom and be silent when you have a falling out
             as with sex, keep this up for weeks

be gregarious in public, make her and other people laugh
             occasionally at her expense

say you don’t know how you won’t put a bullet in your head
             if she decides to leave

"how to make her stay" by Shauna M. Morgan. Used by permission of the poet.