Vermeulen 1

Julia Vermeulen

Elaine Reimer Pare

603-102-MQ

December 5, 2023

Ordinary Hazards: A Chapter Addition

In the memoir Ordinary Hazards, Grimes writes about the time that she gets assaulted by

Clark, however she does not elaborate on her feelings or on the situation because of how much

duress she is in, and instead she writes: “I couldn’t, for the life of me, write the pain away. I

couldn’t write about any of it, at all” (178). I thought it would be interesting to write a chapter of

her later on in life finally being able to write and describe her feelings that she was unable to

express. Additionally, after her experience she describes that she was filled with a lot of anger for

a long time. I also aimed, through verse, to illustrate the extent of the coldness that was brought

onto her.

MY VOICE BOX
It was only on a warm Sunday afternoon,
When the sun kissed my brown skin,
Kisses that wrapped me in a soothing warmth,
that I finally got my voice box back,
Mrs. B. used to say:
“God don’t like ugly.”
And God was this ugly
An ugly ugly memory,
I remember how he forced his hands down my throat,
And stole my voice box right in front of me,
Before I could even utter the word “stop”
My heart that night rotted right along with his rotten soul
rotted like an apple core left out just a little too long,
 Vermeulen 2

It browned, and that must be why I could always smell

a musty, lingering smell right under my nose,
Every time I spoke, his rotten scent wrapped itself around my throat,
Daring me to say another word,
reminding me that nothing beautiful could ever grow out of me
Instead, I grew cold,
The type of cold that gnaws at fingertips and toes,
But on this warm Sunday afternoon,
the cold that nestled itself in my heart began to thaw,
Patches of dark green, and brittle lilacs bloomed,
even when the soil in my heart seemed to lack the nutrients, or rather the love to allow anything
at all to even peak
I yelled and screamed, until my voice box cracked,
Until the birds sprang out of the trees,
Until my heart grew birches and ferns and grape vines,
that reminded me of my burrowed family,
I yelled until his memory was only that,
a memory
My voice box was back,
and
It was louder than ever