I try so hard to scrub him off me.
It has been over four years and I still scream in the night.
The feeling is so suffocating that when I open my lungs, dust puffs out.
All I have left from him is layers over layers over layers of insecurity and fear.
When you ask me if I liked that, I smile and nod and yes yes of course,
But I can’t even feel it anymore.
Sometimes I am so numb by what has happened to me and my protective mechanisms resurface
Blocking every sense of touch and emotion that I have,
Giving you the show that I was taught to give.
The only feeling that remains after we have *** is the feeling of another man’s teeth sinking into my neck,
Clamping down on the blood flow to my brain,
Knocking me out in a much more pleasant way than when he would with his fists.
No matter how raw I scrub myself, his fingerprints and bruises linger.

I love you.
I am trying to forget him.
I am shaking in your arms and it is for all the wrong reasons and it has been a year,
A year into this beautiful life with you and I still don’t think I have told you.
It is not your fault, I know that.
What I don’t know, is if it was mine.

If I told anyone I was *****, they wouldn’t believe me
I live in a world that preaches against hypothetical violence but when that **** comes into your life, everyone pushes it away.
I remember, no I don’t remember, I can barely remember his name.
I think it started with a “C”.
I think he was from Minnesota.
I think we were on a sixteen hour flight.
I think he smiled at me.
I think I smiled back, because why the **** wouldn’t I.
I think he took that as a green light.
I think I shut my eyes to try and sleep.
I think he took that as a green light.
I am fifteen.
I think too little of his advances and trust society enough for me to rest.
I know that was a mistake.
I know I woke up to a blanket around me that wasn’t there before.
I know I woke up to his palm pressed in my pants.
I know I woke up screaming.
I know I couldn’t open my mouth.
I know I was screaming.
I know my mother was on that same plane three rows back.
I was fifteen.

I told my friends and they never believed me.
I haven’t told a soul since.
Why did he walk away from that unscratched while I have been carrying it around like a dead animal for three years?
Why do men think they can own what they can see?
Let me tell you what I can see:
Five people who asked me why I didn’t fight back.
Four people that were sitting around me and claimed to see him putting the cover on me, yet did nothing.
Three of his friends I saw later on the trip who praised him for what he accomplished upon seeing what I looked like.
Two eyes in the mirror that cry almost everyday.
And one crack in that same mirror that will never go away.

I know I'm not worried I'm just upset
Because he doesn't think of me
Because we dated for nearly a year
We were part of each other's lives and now there is a hole
It's fine and I'm over it but it is still there and I acknowledge it,
Accept it,
When he can so easily forget it is there
Not missing him exactly
I'm more jealous of his ability to not miss me
I'm not that upset
Frustrated would be a better word
Yes I know he is gone and out of my life but he isn't just gone
I acknowledge him
I can't help but wonder what his life looks like without me in it
Apparently it looks like Ireland

You ever love someone’s words so much
that there is no other way to display this affection accurately enough other than to consume it whole,
Let it enter your mouth,
Down your throat
Into your stomach
So that you can digest them properly
With patience,
But you can’t eat words because they are just words
And it feels so disheartening to not be able to physically take in someone else's beauty like that.

Maybe
just ******* maybe
I deserve more than you

Maybe
just ******* maybe
I deserve more than all of you

Maybe
no,
Absolutely
I am worth more than you tell me I am

Stop
Yes you do
What does it help
Does it not bother you to think of what we had or what we wanted to be
It kills me
Then forget it
Don't do that to yourself
But that would only hurt so much worse
You're telling me

I am confident
I am crippled
I shake when I struck