He drew a figure eight on my spine, absentmindedly,
and traced the nape of my neck with his fingertip when he said,
“You are beautiful to me.”

But the ellipsis in the silence spoke louder than he did, and the look in his eye was not born because I was lovely;
It was not because he loved me.

A thing too small for love-
But far too large to be lust;

Simple. Ugly.

He looked at me like he was hungry.

So sweetly he critiqued each curve, every line, blurring my edges with the images of every bent perception pulled from the mire of his mind;

and I
could not
satisfy


Pretty innocence diminished in the grip of his vice,
Pressed tight against my body, despised in dark eyes.
I am not the inhuman creatures you contrived in the middle of the night.
I am not the feminine expression of your ******* pride.

What a wicked crime,
to take a woman’s body and leave the woman behind.

You’re going to find yourself alone.
You will be in a hospital room
Or in the backseat of a car
Or on a park bench
And you will have decided you’re alone.
You will have convinced yourself
That there isn’t anyone in the world
You can trust.
Not her,
not him,
not the clothes on your back,
not the air in your lungs.
You will have made yourself alone.
Again.
And you will pay for it with the same currency
As before.
With the same realization
Of emptiness
As always.
And you will stand up
And declare war on yourself
For the way you have been treated
By no one.