“What’s the harm?” they whisper,
“What’s the problem
in being everyone’s fantasy?”
“In having all of your friends
find your flesh attractive?”
“Having the pretty privilege
morph into the entitlement of others?”
As they claim my skin
and caress my bones.
Peeling pieces of my body
and making themselves at home.
Consent is implied
within the lines
of whatever bond we hold.
Friends, family, lovers.
What’s the harm in giving them
what they want,
what they demand they need.
In watching them eat you up
With a never ending greed.
“But you’re my fantasy”
as if I’m obligated
to the impressions of me
you’ve shoved down my throat.
Until I’m choking and sobbing
pleading you to relinquish your hold.
Your eyes leave imprints and bruises
as you salivate over a body
I don’t even see.
It was only 3rd grade.
Again, when merely rending
the damaged goods of a teen.
By the time I was an adult
it was the only way I was seen.
But age matters not,
when you were never perceived
as a human being,
simply a desire
for others to devour.
“What’s the harm in being a *** dream?”
They scream “we’re all friends here”
as they render my sobriety to shreds
Only to tell me that it’s all in my head.
Society taught me to turn a blind eye,
“what’s the harm?” It said with a sigh.
They drugged me with ignorance,
refuting my plea.
A passing inconvenience for you
Born of my own naïveté,
is a trauma memory
that I can never undo.
There isn’t a piece of me
you’ve not seen,
nothing left of myself
to discover.
You’ve rendered my own exploration
into nothing more than a detour.
You’ve taken every first
I could have claimed
and thought to beat a dog
was the equivalent of making it tame.
So now I’m sobbing into a void
wondering why I was ever
a thing that you could destroy?
What is left of me? /angry
