My aged mother has warned me about things -
things every mother tell their blossoming daughters.
Do not lie, she always says,
her eyes hard, her lips thin,
her forehead wrinkled from her furrowed brow,
a look I will never forget-
a look that says “I know theses things for a reason.”

I never listened closely to her words
until I met Him.
I find out everything, she threatens.
Growing up, she never let me
stay at my friend’s who had older brothers.
It was foreign to me, to grow up that way,
so I grew to resent those rules.
So I picked up the habit of lying.

I wish I would’ve held onto her words.
It became an everyday thing,
to lie about where I was going.
Her parent’s are coming to get me,
I would say before I would walk
to the house that ruined me.
It wasn’t her house.

After all these years of my mother’s
warnings and words,
I found out what she meant.
That day, on His couch, I understood.
Although she never truly said it,
I knew she was right.

I grasped at those words,
I remember my trembling hands
itching at them -
they are fire in my throat,
I could not breathe until I freed myself,
but being free took too long,
that I thought if I would spend another minute,
another second - I would pass out.
Growing paler, the flame that kissed my mouth
shot from my lips,
and there laid the heavy words
my mother never said.

Something inside me in killing me,
it feels like an abundance of knives are stabbing me,
while something in gnawing, devouring my insides.
How cold were those unfamiliar hands,
I could not feel them on my body. I could not

feel. All those distractions were for a reason.
I wanted to feel loved.
I found love in the darkest places. The darkest

was His house. It was broad daylight.
He promised to never hurt, to never make it uncomfortable.
I was uncomfortable before I arrived.
The couch was lifeless, but His hands were not, no-
His hands were alive against my ailing skin.
I was not alive. I think

I had died. My whole body felt lamented.
His hands tore at expensive fabric,
His hands clutched at juvenile underwear.
Nothing in between these white walls
had color except the red
of my wrists after he grabbed me.

I didn’t find love there.
I did not find love anywhere.
I found a child forced to grow,
to learn her mistakes. She had to

leave the last years of childhood,
to a man who did not want her,
but her growing body.
She had to pick herself back up.
She still sees Him everyday. He

smiles. He’s not a man. He smiles.
And I will never forget him.
And I will never forget him.
And I will never forget him,
and he hasn’t forgotten me.