How do I heal when the pain and shame you caused was not an accident?
When we four convened around the kitchen table to tell the same stories, the same details.
We'll never truly know what goes on in your head.
How do we heal?

I drove home at 4 am last night, scared, alone.
Outside reality, outside of time on stretches and stretches of empty, barren roads.
Silhouettes flickered peripherally as I held some feral, desperate creature chained tight in my chest.
Shifting, aching at the weight of anguish yet unfelt.
I wished for the urge to scream, but my face remained calm. Numb.
I wished for tears, but they wouldn’t, couldn’t come.
Matter of fact memories of hands and teeth on my body won’t spare my mind's pleading eyes.
No soap could ever cut through the grime.

I came home to my lover’s arms.
They kneaded flesh that would not feel
They wove time back into this madness, where nothing is real.
They left at dawn, and half-awake I let them go.
At midday I sit, exhausted. Alone.
How can I heal? How can I feel?
Why does it hurt more now that I know?
When before it was brushed off, excused, let go?
It was uncomfortable, bothersome as an accident.
But you knew better. That knowledge chills, it builds walls in my head.
How do I heal?
How can I pause when the world never stops, and who can I tell?
What do I say?
So many told me not to; I did it anyway.