‘waiting to be mounted’ – teenage desire in the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse.
I took this photo crossing the Bay of Naples from Capri in December. The sky and sea had stilled to a halcyon calm, but waves set off by the rapid motion of the catamaran began dashing against the cabin windows at a certain point in our journey. They appeared dark, and menacing, notwithstanding the clear, gold-tinted sunset behind them. The contrast brought to mind some of my teenage experiences, when I was attempting to reclaim agency within my body after being sexually abused as a child.
A bookish, bi-sexual, feisty young feminist, I wanted to launch myself into seas of shimmering erotic possibility, as suggested by Colette, and other writers who I read – but every time I tried to enact my desires physically, waves of darkness and difficulty would break over me.
‘jockey’ and ‘waiting to be mounted’ are two poems which respond to that period in my life. They also reach out, through my own experience, to other people who may have had to navigate these difficult waters in their own pasts, or may be doing so now. Many of us faced, or are facing, harsh judgements around choices interpreted as ‘promiscuous’ by others. ‘Society’ has yet fully to accept how sexual abuse in childhood can impact emerging sexualities – or recognise that re-claiming our sexual selves, however we do so, is a core act of personal healing.
By giving witness to our experiences, those of us who have been sexually abused in childhood can offer compassion and support to each other, and keep at the work of changing awareness around the difficult emotional terrains left in the wake of this this crime.
alice@alicehiller.info
fifteen – but she’s asking
slide in with your stories
– here are easy pickings
tell her about the years down
under – the beatings in the children’s
home you ran away from
and your whore-mother left back in Britain
don’t leave out the cruel priest-fathers
see how she’s listening – now
kiss the girl with the aubergine
hair and just-bought lipstick
don’t worry if she’s shaking
lead her upstairs in her black
t-shirt – her eyes are closed
pull back your cold bedding
ease down her
leopard-skin leggings
when she’s braced
you can mount
the young warhorse
for she has chosen you to ride
her out towards a new freedom
waiting to be mounted –
our fishnets
speak to men
one of them stands
before us
weeping drops
from his head
we rub ourselves
against the starting post
until this rider
lifts his whip
and then
we tumble –
stampeded
by diamond hooves
Alice Hiller is a poet and prose writer and critic making work derived from her own experience of being sexually abused in childhood. She was a finalist for the 2019 Arts Foundation Futures Award, reached the shortlist for the inaugural Rebecca Swift prize and was a Jerwood Arvon mentee. She has poems in Poetry London and Magma and reviews for the Poetry Review. She runs a twice monthly free workshop out of the National Theatre foyer, and is conducting a ‘saying the difficult thing’ interview series through her blog alicehiller.info.
