Margo Perin
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They Say
from When a Lion is Chasing You, a collection of poetry 
​
​Dedicated to girls everywhere​
​

They say that cells in the body
renew themselves every seven years
 
They say that cats have nine lives
 
When I was nine
Or was it ten, eleven, twelve?
I learned to smoke
I learned to sing
I learned to wrap my heart
Inside a knot of string
 
Thirteen and that’s when the drinking started
The Mandrax, the reds, the blues
Red Leb, Paki Black, microdots
And fight after fight
Sneaking off to the pub in Glasgow, the Red Lion
With my sisters and the men who were buying
Was it one vodka or two, three or four
Until the police came knocking at our door
My sister in George Square had been caught
With a man and the dope they had bought
Yelling and screaming out of their heads
The police knocked my parents out of their beds
To the station at the town center my parents were taken
To find my sister trembling and shaking
Out the door my father was able to bail her
In the street he knocked her to the curb
Smashed his fist and foot into her face
My mother stood over them, there was no grace
Take off her glasses they’re expensive was all she said
My father removed them and beat her almost dead
Locked into the house, onto canvas she painted a man screaming help
And turned it outward, making my father explode, yelp
How dare you, take that down, you ungrateful whore
Do that again, you’ll be hook line and sinker out that door
Where was she to go, fifteen and scared
I at her side, oh, if only we dared
Fight after fight, my sisters and I were punched
In the stomach, heart, and neck, sucked
Into this town dark as the night, kidnapped
By the man who dealt the deck
 
I sought comfort in sex with a man
Or was it two, three or four, glad to be so in demand
Until a baby came knocking at my door
Knocked up by a heroin addict
Who shot up, then threw up
Before taking me into the bathroom
Where on black and white tiles blurred together like ink
I pretended to enjoy it
I wanted love
After he got up and left me there
I knew for sure nothing was fair
 
My father punched me in the stomach when he found out
No longer could I leave the house, there was no way out
The baby sucked out of me in an illegal abortion
Down in South London, it must have cost a fortune
The nurses they hated me, they too called me whore
Wouldn’t give me food to eat, hissing through a crack in the door
While back in the north, down the street from where we lived
My hair chopped short, none of my clothes to be found
Dumped in a garbage can, my brother knew but said nothing, bound
As he was to silence by my parents who threatened him as well
You talk to your sister, you’ll go to hell
He more frightened than me, scared to act out
So he vacuumed their floor and at me began to shout
You prostitute, why are you so mean to Dad
You’re a piece of shit, a troublemaker, badder than bad
 
We were living in London by then, two years and eleven months
After first arriving at the town on a Scottish coast full of drunks
Was it one man, or two or three or four
When the second baby came knocking at my door
This time I made sure my father didn’t find out
And the man I’d done it with, he barely made it out
Of work in time to visit me down south
So rushed was he to be out of this fix
Arrived late and left again in a jiff
I wanted to be loved
I wanted to be liked
So like any other girl looking for a home
Through sex I thought I’d find a place to belong
But all I found was sex, and still had nowhere to go
So I popped more, drank more, smoked more, and never said no