Feel
I was 12 when I felt it.
The breeze of his steps grasped me and forced my doe eyes to follow its trail
That tightness where my breath hurt, the thoughts like clouds, a blinding fog, foreshadowing fate in the form of the videos they showed us in 5th grade health classrooms.
In my head, I WAS knowledge. I WAS the DEFINITION of what it was to love
I KNEW I needed him, and I knew when he asked me for a kiss where my lips had never been, that he never needed ME.
He didn’t need to learn how to control me, he didn’t have to force me to give up my friends.
Michael and Peter and Anthony were threats, any person with a piece to fit in my pretty little puzzle was a demon come to whisk me away and trample on our “love”
Calling me back to him when I strayed with a shaking voice, and like a dog I obeyed and like a dog I shrunk in the corner, afraid I might wreck the red carpet he’s rolled out just for me and that he might hit me when I did.
He never did.
But I could have sworn the tight leash around my neck felt just like his hands.
I had handed him a knife to ease my pain.
Just one incision, one small sentence and I was slamming doors and banging tables and screaming at my own mother to get me a good, strong rope so I wouldn’t feel it when he said he didn’t love me anymore.
It felt like a vortex, it tasted like salt and it sounded like glass in the hands of a child.
I was 14 when I felt it.
I was a battle and a war and the blood that covered his hands.
He was the angel I had torn from this deity of which I had no faith, and demolition of my 12 began.
In my heart I WAS his last, I WAS the one he would spend a month’s salary on just to see me in the most common of contradictions, the embodiment of impurity strangled in the dress my mother would buy me, pure, shocking white in the eyes of a bewildered priest. The color of angels burning the color of my cheeks.
I KNEW I was alone with him.
I was wrong.
She called me on the phone in the middle of our lives and she took it away, YOU took it away.
In my head I screamed “YOU BITCH, YOU WHORE, YOU LIAR! DON’T YOU EVER TOUCH HIM AGAIN! HOW DARE YOU TAKE AWAY THE ONLY SHRED OF DIGNITY I HAD LEFT WITH YOUR LIPS THAT TASTE LIKE HIS AND YOUR WINE THAT TASTES LIKE THE FRIENDS HE SAID HE WAS SEEING AND THE NOTHING THAT HE SAID HAD HAPPENED. I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON EACH OTHER’S TONGUES AND THEY POISON YOU LIKE SNAKES, RISING FROM THE VERY DESOLATE PIT YOU CALL A HEART. STAY AWAY FROM MY HAPPINESS”
Out loud I said, “Thank you for telling me.”
The ticking sound exploded and my trust was scattered like the freckles and birthmarks and fingers and toes and limbs and flesh I wished I could tear from his body, one for every time he said he was mine.
It felt like a train, it tasted like acid, and it sounded like screeching tires on a freshly paved road.
I was 12 when I started letting blood.
I was 13 when I learned the meaning of “emotional abuse”.
I was 14 when I started thinking I was worthless.
I was 15 when I stopped eating.
I was 16 when I started again.
I was 12 when I felt it, but I was 13 and 14 and 15 and 16 too.
Still feeling 12.
I was 17 when I stopped feeling it.
I was 17 when I stopped feeling at all.
The breeze of his steps grasped me and forced my doe eyes to follow its trail
That tightness where my breath hurt, the thoughts like clouds, a blinding fog, foreshadowing fate in the form of the videos they showed us in 5th grade health classrooms.
In my head, I WAS knowledge. I WAS the DEFINITION of what it was to love
I KNEW I needed him, and I knew when he asked me for a kiss where my lips had never been, that he never needed ME.
He didn’t need to learn how to control me, he didn’t have to force me to give up my friends.
Michael and Peter and Anthony were threats, any person with a piece to fit in my pretty little puzzle was a demon come to whisk me away and trample on our “love”
Calling me back to him when I strayed with a shaking voice, and like a dog I obeyed and like a dog I shrunk in the corner, afraid I might wreck the red carpet he’s rolled out just for me and that he might hit me when I did.
He never did.
But I could have sworn the tight leash around my neck felt just like his hands.
I had handed him a knife to ease my pain.
Just one incision, one small sentence and I was slamming doors and banging tables and screaming at my own mother to get me a good, strong rope so I wouldn’t feel it when he said he didn’t love me anymore.
It felt like a vortex, it tasted like salt and it sounded like glass in the hands of a child.
I was 14 when I felt it.
I was a battle and a war and the blood that covered his hands.
He was the angel I had torn from this deity of which I had no faith, and demolition of my 12 began.
In my heart I WAS his last, I WAS the one he would spend a month’s salary on just to see me in the most common of contradictions, the embodiment of impurity strangled in the dress my mother would buy me, pure, shocking white in the eyes of a bewildered priest. The color of angels burning the color of my cheeks.
I KNEW I was alone with him.
I was wrong.
She called me on the phone in the middle of our lives and she took it away, YOU took it away.
In my head I screamed “YOU BITCH, YOU WHORE, YOU LIAR! DON’T YOU EVER TOUCH HIM AGAIN! HOW DARE YOU TAKE AWAY THE ONLY SHRED OF DIGNITY I HAD LEFT WITH YOUR LIPS THAT TASTE LIKE HIS AND YOUR WINE THAT TASTES LIKE THE FRIENDS HE SAID HE WAS SEEING AND THE NOTHING THAT HE SAID HAD HAPPENED. I HOPE YOU CHOKE ON EACH OTHER’S TONGUES AND THEY POISON YOU LIKE SNAKES, RISING FROM THE VERY DESOLATE PIT YOU CALL A HEART. STAY AWAY FROM MY HAPPINESS”
Out loud I said, “Thank you for telling me.”
The ticking sound exploded and my trust was scattered like the freckles and birthmarks and fingers and toes and limbs and flesh I wished I could tear from his body, one for every time he said he was mine.
It felt like a train, it tasted like acid, and it sounded like screeching tires on a freshly paved road.
I was 12 when I started letting blood.
I was 13 when I learned the meaning of “emotional abuse”.
I was 14 when I started thinking I was worthless.
I was 15 when I stopped eating.
I was 16 when I started again.
I was 12 when I felt it, but I was 13 and 14 and 15 and 16 too.
Still feeling 12.
I was 17 when I stopped feeling it.
I was 17 when I stopped feeling at all.