Behind the Title

 

Still Amidst the Pain

TW - loss of pregnancy/violence

    While reflecting on my collection of poems before publishing, I realized I needed to come up with a title to tie it all together. At first, I had the idea of naming the book after one of my favorite original paintings, "Still Amidst the Pain." This painting (pictured above) is about living with the after-effects of an unwanted abortion, which was one of the most difficult elements of trafficking that I've yet to completely recover from (and probably never will). I am still amidst the pain off loss that I went through years ago, when a John took care of it himself in the back of his van.

    I actually have two poems in Where the Flies Swarm about this terrifying memory. The poems that describe my experiences through this abortion are called "I Wanted to Keep It -  Forgotten" and "I Wanted to Keep It - Tantrum." These poems were originally one, but I had decided to divide it up and removed some unnecessary parts through the editing process. The poems are about the loss of freedom of choice over my body in those moments, and grieving a loss because of it. This loss was one of the greatest I experienced through my life of human trafficking, and so I saw it fit to title the book with words that encapsulated that large amount of pain. 

    However, an unwanted abortion, although devastating, was not an event that represents my overall experience surviving human sex trafficking. There are so many elements to the traumas in my life that it's impossible to pick just one memory, one moment in time, or one event that captures the destruction and dismantling of humanity through the trafficking culture. However, the first poem in Where the Flies Swarm, "Muscle for Meat," captures this concept as well as I was able to do. The poem is about the shift from human to carcass, it's about being dehumanized to the point of not recognizing one's self beyond how abusers view and treat their victims. I love this poem because it captures the hopelessness that I felt for so long, and really paints a picture of the creature I was made to become through the way I treated during my years being sex trafficked. This poem really outlines the mental space I wanted the reader to hold for the remainder of the book, and gives a rough idea of the isolation and dehumanization I went through as a sex trafficking survivor as I compare myself to a piece of meat being used, abused, processed, and taken advantage of.

    Because of the way I was treated growing up, I thought of myself as less than human. I thought of other people as realer than I, and that I was not only on a lower level than the rest, but in a completely different category. I understood myself as a different biological make up, invalid existence, which is why I was generally okay (or tolerated) the things that were happening to me. 

    The phrase "Where the Flies Swarm" produces an image of flies surrounding something rotting, aging, and decomposing. It implies that there is something sitting with decay and mold, and something that has probably been corroding for a long time. This is the image I wanted to viewer to have of my body, because it's how I felt being used, sold, recycled over and over, and preyed on for so many years and so many times. I wanted the reader to gain an awareness of how long my body has been rotting. Flies only swarm and fester when there is decay to feed upon. 

    The following poems (like many of them in Where the Flies Swarm) focus on describing the state of my body and how it felt being raped, assaulted, and monetized for years. The poems present an overall awareness that my body was never mine, or wasn't even a live body at all. The death of my body, my rights, and my autonomy are all presented throughout the poems in the book, and highlighted in the title of Where the Flies Swarm.