This is about violence
This is about the surprise you felt
as you lay on the kitchen floor
at your friend’s house,
his hands round your throat
their dog barking and whining.
This is about the way
you thought you were strong
(and you were strong)
and the way that you thought
you were better than that,
but you were grieving
and you wanted to feel loved,
and his eyes saw right inside you
(or so you thought)
and sometimes a good thing
can turn into a bad thing
and you can’t read the warnings,
and sometimes the warnings
aren’t there at all.
This is about the way you felt ashamed
and couldn’t tell anyone,
even though they judged you at the pub
for turning your face away from him
when he was all smiles and innocence.
This is about the way we take the blame
for things that are not our fault.
This is about violence –
how sometimes we just don’t recognise it
until it hits us.
Julia Webb is a working class writer, editor and poetry mentor based in Norwich. She is a poetry editor for Lighthouse. She has three collections with Nine Arches Press: Bird Sisters (2016) Threat (2019) and The Telling (2022). She has had two poems highly commended in The Forward Prize.