I told you...

I told you I’d been hurt,

Through the heady haze of inebriation;

And your fingers brushed over my hand.

A few weeks ago he told me

That he’d found someone else,

Because I wasn’t capable of love.

It was like a window pane had been shattered

And the sharp edges somehow found their way

Into my heart

As though my blood came in waves and left them behind as debris.

But that wasn’t what I told you.

I told you that a lot of the time…things weren’t consensual.

It felt like rushing wind around my ears to hear myself say the words,

And I couldn’t say more because the words were like salt granules;

They kept on falling onto my open wounds and it stung like an innocent bumblebee stings

Because it doesn’t know any better.

Later, as you fingers touched me lower down,

Feeling the wetness between my thighs,

I moaned and tried to forget that anything else existed,

Or had ever existed.

I tried to forget that anyone else had ever touched me.

I tried to forget that anyone else had ever wanted to.

I tried to forget that that choice was not always my own.

I tried to forget about the invasion of self

That had been happening since I was a young girl

Before I understood what it meant.

When the boys would touch me and laugh

And I didn’t have the right to feel violated.

I kissed you again and again,

And I knew exactly what I had to do

To make you happy.

You said I was drunk,

We shouldn’t rush things.

But I like to rush, like to go so fast I don’t have time to think,

And lose my mind completely, let my body take over and be in and of itself for once,

The only thing that really matters, in the same way it is seen by everyone else.

My body is me, fundamentally,

Public property,

All that you’ll ever see,

All that I’ll ever be.

I told you I’d been hurt

And you brushed my hair away from my face

And kissed me.

And I didn’t know what to think.