[...] and the greater the wound the greater the fang. And, when we experience trauma that is given to us by so many people, we find that we have become every one of them at once. In my body I hold every trauma. In my eye is all of theirs. In the eyes of God, I am an abomination.

Sixteenth of September,
six days after my sister was born
was the first time I remember it happening.

Body in my bed, I knew that was strange⁠—
I had always slept alone⁠—
but I didn’t know if it was wrong.
In school the next day
I looked around at all the girls,
I wanted to ask if this was normal.

I was twelve and I could not be sure
my body belonged to me.
I read horror stories,
compared myself to them and said,
you have faced a fraction of the full range.
I said, you were complicit,
he never told you to be silent.

I am seventeen still reading
article after article and I think:
my father is not evil,
my father does not deserve to be behind bars⁠—
who will feed my family?⁠—
but I think I would feel safer if he was.

          I think about one night
when he asked, “ does it feel good”
and I felt myself disintegrate.
I am not sure he heard what I heard:
does it feel good when I am making your body,
in which you will stand
for the rest of your life, unlivable?
Does it feel good when I am desecrating it,
when I make it unholy ground?

At the trial of our sins I will ask
God what my body is, and He will say
“it is a trust” and I will point to you and say
“then he has broken it.”

your filthy hands
           gripped on my jaw,
your grimy fingers
                      forcing my mouth open
                            treated like a dog who won't let go of a shoe
                       defiled
                  ruined
dehumanized

i was
    a little lamb
               and you were
                      a wolf in sheep's clothing
and when i trusted you
         you tore off your wool
                 and dug your claws
                                  into my flesh

i beg for air,
and you still wont let me go.

You planted a knife in me,
ten inches deep
almost a decade ago.

and I can't get it out.

you can only push it deeper.
and you still do,
without trying.

I don't blame you; the truth hurts.
Silence must have been better than admitting your son was really a monster.

Inferior. That's what I am compared to him.
He can do as he pleases while I am the mere thing he used for his own gratification once or twice.

But that's what happens when you give someone everything, and they degrade you after turning you into nothing. That's what happens when you're inferior. That's what happens to scared little girls. That's what happens when you're meant to fend for yourself. That's what happens, when from the start, you're nothing.