My choice as a young lass
is very essential; it will bring
permanent changes in my life.

And that’s the thought I didn’t
come to think of when I was 16.
My choices haunted me
for the rest of my existence.

I just hope to consign to oblivion
your tiled floors and iron hands
the leather belts and broken glasses
so as my bruised skin and scarred wrists.

All that’s become black and blue.

Because that’s what I want,
to tell my daughter to be careful
and not to be that girl in my own story.