If you asked me 

how it felt to be 

raped, I couldn’t tell you. 

My mind deleted that memory. 

I can only tell 

you what my mind 

did to cope.

You become the liar.

He said you always 

were, so any form 

of trauma is just 

a lie that you

wove, to get attention. 

You don’t believe yourself

anymore, you think anything

you think is selfish,

another putrid curse

your mouth spewed that

is only lightly laced 

in truth. 

You learn to bend 

every truth, add your

own spin on it.

So that you can’t

question what is truth,

and what is a lie. 

In your mind’s filter,

everything is a lie.

It’s a good way

to hide the truth, 

to trick your brain

to believe everything you

say is a lie. 

It dulls the angst 

inside your belly, your

only real beacon of

truth.

You learn to lie 

about everything, even the

stupid things. You extend

the time by an hour,

you exaggerate a number

and double it. Any

little fib to add to 

the guilt you have building.

The guilt that won’t ever let you forgive yourself. Because you don’t deserve it.

You deserved to have been abused. 

No one would have believed you.

And so you became what you believed. 

A walking, talking lie. 

Mauricio Moreno is a 1st generation Colombian-American artist and writer, originally from Elizabeth, New Jersey. He moved to California to fulfill his life mission of being a writer and sharing the stories of others to bring readers closer together and heal the world. His work has been published in Conchas Y Cafe, a Los Angeles-based quarterly zine published by DSTL Arts, and is also featured as part of the Summer Literature exhibition in Intercultural Press. He is currently working on a novel and is also in the process of publishing his first collection of poetry. When he is not writing poetry, he can be found throwing axes at deadwood, being a fur dad, and dissecting governments with his revolutionary wife.