Do you remember the time you crinkled up your nose at the sound of my favorite band and shook your head in dissaprovement?
You used to do it all the time
You picked at me like you picked at your scabs
Except instead of it hurting you, it hurt me
Do you remember when you said why with a look of disgust when you saw the scars on my ankles and I told you I was sad, that I'd cut them with razors and scissors?
I still do it all the time
I remember the next day after you found out you told your friend and he told the entire softball team and I asked you why with a look of disgust on my face, you said well it's gross
And my eye lids filled with tears, the dam broke and they fled free
You said stop, you're making a scene
One day when I came home from the library I found my Christmas lights that were strung across my walls, crushed into pieces
And you said you need to grow up and stop acting like a child
I screamed in terror that you destroyed them just like my heart
But all you did was laugh and say oh please, stop being so melodramatic
Nothing I did was ever good enough for you
You painted my walls grey so I could toughin' up and stop whining all the time
How the hell was grey walls going to do that?
I hated you so much but was so afraid of that hand that was inevitably going to collide with my face and legs and back and nose
And those hands that would crush my bones over and over
And that fist that would plant a black and blue bruise on my left eye
Why do you hurt me?
Dedication goes to any woman who has ever Ben beaten, or man for that matter. This is not an experience that has happened to me, by the way.