That night
is stuck in my skin
like the drunk tattoo
a hangover wakes up to.
The more time that passes,
the more it sinks in.

The night I denied being a woman
was the night you insisted on being a man.
I laid beneath your body,
a sleeping child
with limp limbs
and a body no longer mine.
That night, I wished I was no body
but I was less than that
I was your body.

The silence rested between us
like a gun
aimed at your gut.
Every bit of strength I had in my tongue
formed only one weak word,
No.
The word tore through me like a bullet,
leaving shrapnel in my lungs.
I waited for you to collapse
into the three am darkness,
to fall to the floor
a defeated man.

But your hips moved
as if my lips had not,
and you pinned me to the floor boards
like those butterflies I killed
in biology class.
I know how sick I felt
when I plucked their frail bodies
from the noxious mason jars
and pinned them to some cardboard
like cheap decorations
that never lived at all.
I wonder if you felt sick too.

I know your hands
have the potential to hold
but I only felt them
in purple palm prints
bruised across my skin.

I know that night
the ***** blinded you
but I thought
maybe you would read my tears like braille
and feel fear move beneath your fingers,
my fear, my hideous fear.
But you didn’t,
you wouldn’t feel it.

That morning you awoke
with a convenient case of amnesia
and you didn’t,
you wouldn’t remember
but I can’t,
I won’t forget
and I hate you for that.

I hate the way you feel in my flesh.
I hate the way you look in my head
I hate the way I look now too.

Time has passed since that,
this has set in
and the only thing I hate more
than waking up to you that morning
is me
for letting you in.

©Jenna Allie