Sweetelle: A Telling

They want to know what I would gain from telling of this now:
        how buttons were fingered, how my pants were pulled quickly down.
How the second time, the man who'd become my uncle said
        Be quiet or I'll hurt you, every single one of you.
They want to know what I would gain from telling of this now:
        I had no words then for what was done to me in secret;
I'm from a country where women supposedly don't own
        a voice; and children are better seen, if at all, than heard. 
Decades have passed; the guilt and shame not mine, and yet, and yet--   
        they want to know what I would gain from telling of this now.

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