I consistently wonder
Who I would be,
If he never touched me
If he never forced his fingers
Down my throat
Locked his sweaty palm
Around my neck
And probed my body with his penis
There have been so many showers
Struggling to wash away
The perfect details of that night.
The massive weight of his stomach
Pinning me against the frame of the cot,
The shock of how invasive
Two fingers could be,
The moist expression of orange juice and vodka
Whispering,
“This feels like a dream.”
The immense fear.
I wept into my friend’s arms the next day.
“That’s the shitty part about being a woman.”
Was all she had to say.
I did not tell anyone else
For years.
I watched, as if in a glass cage;
The echoes of my people being engrained into me
"You wanted it.
You just regretted having sex.
You are just searching for attention.
You weren’t actually raped."
I witnessed women accept the blame
Of something that was done to them.
I did not want to hear the verification
That I was the one at fault.
I forgot that
I had value as a person.
I forgot that
I was more than just a body.
I forgot myself.
I remember afternoons
Cradled against my father’s shot gun
Never knowing what was pulling me away
From pulling the trigger.
Change seemed to swell slowly
An unnoticeable growth
Until it had built enough
To crash me into the blunt realization:
It was not my fault.
It was not my fault
That I was sexually assaulted
By a twenty-two-year-old man
When I was sixteen.
It was his fault.
It was Max’s fault.
I still wonder who I would be,
If no one woke me up that night.
If his girlfriend had stayed.
If his friend,
Sleeping ten feet away,
Had intervened.
But now,
I can look at myself and feel strength.
The strength that pulled me away from death.
The strength to face my vulnerability.
The strength to move forward.
The strength to love.
The strength to be happy.