He scribbled a prophecy into my skin with an ice-cold blade
Marking me to his fellow predators
As easy prey
He believed that it was “a little girls job to please a man, like him”

He decorated me in pretty clothes and jewelry
Walking me around to show off his sparkly new object
One day he asked for something in return
As he’d given so much already without asking
And almost completely overnight the pretty decorations I wore with such esteem
Became the bumps and the bruises
They made me feel secure about my place in his life, and mine
He believed that “it was better for everyone when he got what he wanted, especially me”

He told me I was grown-up for my age
Playing house felt so surreal
Running errands and planning dinners
Having my own nuclear prison to rot away in was so appealing
One with gorgeous photos hung on a wall decorated also with drywall patches
He left me with a permanent reminder
The imperfectly circular shape of a fire poker end
In one of his favorite thumb holds
He believed that “thank you was all I should be screaming, for all the work that he’s put into me”

He used to treat me like I didn’t exist
Like a burden to him in every situation
I was better seen not heard
I absolutely had to be doped up to be interesting to him
I once told someone he was hitting me and he adamantly held the position
That I begged him to do it
The worst part was that I very well may have
He used to get me so drunk I couldn’t see, or feel, right
He believed that “I would never find someone who’d love me like he did, no one could”

He carefully pretended to rescue me
From the trap I had lain out just for myself
He crept his way into the foreground of my life
With a sick plan
And while I had known that his intentions were less than honest
I couldn’t place my finger on anything particularly that I distrusted
His begging was painful to my ears
But he reminded me of all the men before him
In the pathetic way that he told me he desperately needed me,
Like the sun needed the sky
Then acted like he never wanted me to begin with
He believed that I’d never leave him.

He believed that I was the pièce de résistance of his cynical brainwashing trials
When in reality I had been set up for failure
See from the very, very, beginning
I had been chasing that first hit of validation