Little Princess

I felt like the world was dying,

A shuddering, gasping wheezing breath:

You left the mark on my skin,

Black and in the shape of a crescent moon,

Where the darkness danced on my arms,

And the colours made sure to never fade too soon.

I think it burned where your hands hovered,

It was hard to see past the long dried tears,

But I knew in the end my face was covered,

Pinpricks of blood that pooled in my collar bones,

It was like the kiss of death,

The way your fingers tore into my hair,

And the way the alcohol danced off your breath,

With a sourness that seared like poison,

As it poured itself into my veins and settled in my heart,

Where you then left it without reason.

And as your hand raised into a fist above your head,

The blood on your knuckles looked like fire,

And the icy coldness in my chest resisted the heat,

As a new burning spread across my cheek.

I begged for you to stop,

Only until I learned to stop begging,

When I learned that no matter how many times you struck,

You were looking for a bulls eye,

And I was the ‘x’ that marked the spot.

So as your clenched fingers dragged across my face,

And your fingers knotted deep into my hair,

I remained frozen to that place,

And my mind was ravaged by fear.

It was as if you had taken the needle in your hand,

And with careful precision of every stitch,

Sewn my screaming lips closed with rubber band,

So even if the truth escaped of your guilty itch,

It would slam back and get me once more,

Forever burying your secrets of a crying little girl,

Behind a trap you made yourself so you could keep score.

Do you remember making it a game?

That time around the campfire with a beer in hand,

You and all your buddies took a masterful aim,

As you made it rain down upon me in glass.

I still have the scars that pepper my cheeks,

The feeling has never left me,

The way I then cowered from them for weeks.

But that night was yours,

For you called yourself the winner,

The way you yelled at me for crying in pain at that late hour,

And when I wouldn’t stop crying you made me a promise,

You promised to give me a reason to scream,

And for that I can say your word never went amiss,

Your hands in my hair, your fingers around my neck,

I felt like the world was dying,

And I’d never get a reality check…

The way I cried for you to ‘please, not again’,

Oh, how that fueled you as you pulled my head back,

It felt like a nightmare I’d forever be caught it,

As your fists collided with a awful crack,

That night you broke one of my ribs,

And you turned both my eyes black.

The worst was at the end of it all,

You called me your little princess,

And asked me to forget it as you slammed me into the wall,

Then left me crying out in the dirt,

And you went back to the campfire to finish your beer,

And I was broken inside much worse than any hurt.

You ruined who I was; you created what I am,

I could never forgive you, you wretched man.