Why did it come to this?

adele-heyes Poems

I never thought I’d see you again. Sixteen years of a face erased by time but not by memory. Blurred — yet the damage never was. Ten years of trauma rotting quietly inside me. Waiting. Patient. My twenty-first birthday became another casualty. Another thing you ruined without consequence. Today, there you were. Walking toward the courtroom doors. Head turned just enough to remind me you still refuse to face what you did. You hide in plain sight. You always have. Your arrogance leaks from you — thick, obvious, disgusting. Everyone sees it. I stood still. I stood tall. I did not look away. You did. I am not the little girl you broke and left behind. You don’t get access to me. You don’t get fear. You don’t get control. I needed to see you. Before the lies. Before the courtroom masks. Before you pretend you don’t remember. You remember. When you walked away, I looked at the ceiling — not for comfort, but because I refused to look down. I cried just enough to stay upright. My body paid the price. Every nerve lit up. Pain everywhere — not emotional, not symbolic — real. I got home and my body shut off. Like a machine that had survived too long. The next day, the tears sat trapped, heavy, stuck behind years of silence. Then I spoke. And it tore out of me. Seeing you dragged me backward — into a smaller body, a quieter voice, a child who mistook abuse for love. I asked myself if you ever loved me, or if love was just another word you used to keep me still. I don’t want to see you again. But I will. A year. Twelve months of waiting for accountability you’ve avoided your whole life. Maybe you’ll admit it. Maybe you won’t. But you know. What you did lives in my body — in my pain, my nervous system, my nights. It will never live in you the way it lives in me. I am left with questions you refuse to answer. And one truth you can’t escape: I survived you. So tell me — why did it come to this?