She was fifteen and messy haired, a sweet girl you would call "honey" without a tone of patronage, fuzzy pink sweater and braces and eyes that folded when she smiled, so much so we called her Squints McGee.
But what could so easily be hidden behind eyes crinkled with laughter and warm purple slippers were the names others whispered as she walked by, snakes that slithered out of slit lips and silent stealthy glares,
NAMES THEY CALL MY BEST FRIEND
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Names that hurt me as I walked beside her, protecting her as a younger sister, my beautiful best friend. Begging others "don't judge her, you don't understand, just get to know her"
Parked outside the football field on January or was it November ish evening- fingers nervously tapping out confessions on the dashboard, honest melting eyes, she told me everything. What he promised her, what he stole from her, unwrapping her like a Christmas present, greedily, gift paper in strips on the living room floor.

I was seventeen and tall, with brown hair and hips that led boys in Whataburger late at night to make sounds as I walked by. I wore combat boots and wrote poetry on my phone and was known as the worst driver in my high school. But what could so easily be masked behind thick glasses lenses and chunky earrings was the ****** war raging in my brain
NAMES HE CALLED ME THAT NIGHT
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And laying backstage at theatre rehearsal, I told her. Whispered I loved him and he was the one, he just made a mistake. He would come back, I was sure of it. But at home I dug razors into my thoughts and screamed emptiness into my pillow.

If he loved me, why did he hurt me? Break my body into pieces and choose the parts he wanted, squeeze my trust between his fingers, paint my mind with his anger and his drug addiction.

If he loved her, why did he hurt her? Kidnap her innocence and stamp her with a fragile mark, make her body a punchline to his friends, publish her secrets to the football team.

Because of him the word love will forever be associated with pain, the act of *** tainted with punishment, the idea of a companion smeared with abandonment.

Because of you I had a panic attack in my shower on Christmas Eve, naked and shaking on the cold tile floor, where blood looks oddly orange and my hair swirls into lines that look like a map to my messy mind.

And when my mother found me. And I told her the truth. Two years from the day she picked me up from the park late at night and begged me to tell her if I was hurt and I lied.

She told me the same thing had happened to her once too.