Everybody's Girl

For years, I was known as the girl in a baby pink top and jeans that glistened of pink and purple innocence. 

But the hand wrapped around my waist, nails biting into skin– 

pressed to skin 

said otherwise. 

No one knew my name. 

I was forever a moment in time, a smile twisted tightly against pale fists, a grip constricting a heart too numb to feel.  

Forever a snapshot, a photo, a flimsy piece of paper– delicate and brittle, passed around and easily torn apart limb from limb constricted under the weight of a crown I could not hold, from a man who believed a title made it right, 

made it his birthright, to sleep with me. 

I was 17 years old. 

I was a child. 

It meant nothing. 

They only saw me for how I appeared– a girl who found herself wound up in silk sheets, legs bare, and inviting in the beds of other men. 

But they don’t know the truth. Far from it. 

They don’t know of my childhood, how it was stripped away from me,

how I was robbed of my body,  my voice– a candle with a flame so dim it died before I could even learn how high it could burn.  

Leaving me alone in a darkness I was too afraid to face, but there weren’t any monsters under my bed who could hurt me.

That’s what my father said. 

But he too was one of them. 

The monsters couldn’t be found because they were right beside me, in front of me, next to me– the whole time, my father refused to give me the lamplight that would give me the eyes to see. 

In the midst of blundering darkness I was a child molded by the hands who abused me. Everything I knew was the way to hurt not to heal. Every fingertip left a bruise that blossomed on tender skin. Every touch felt nothing like the pleasure I was promised but the pain I had learned to know. 

I was seven years old. 

Seven when cold hands of a person I was told I could trust reached for my softened body, delicate and blushed and all luscious skin, absent of all that made a woman a woman, with an intent that held anything but love. 

I was a child. 

It meant nothing. 

I was born with a cloth on my mouth and a curtain over my eyes, hands bound behind my back and a back bowed to a God I could not see. 

Was I reaped only for the benefit of men? 

But the stitches across my tongue wouldn’t let that question be answered. 

Passed around like a ‘platter of fruit’

Plucked by the hands who raised me, knuckles bent in a brass cage, pressing grapes into wine between thumb and forefinger.

Cracking the fragile shell of purity open like the carcasses of the ones they disposed, bending and sculpting me until I was someone I could hardly recognize. 

Until I was what they wanted.  

Until blemishes marred my skin, spreading like ink beneath my bones,

scars punctured every vein, every artery, every bead of blood mimicking each and every heartbeat that pumped not with red, but a black of malice and greed–

turned sick with rot.  

Even then, as their hands claimed what wasn’t theirs, I could feel the noxious fluid that coursed through their veins, curling and writhing beneath their flesh. 

Fingers dipped in want, forcing themselves past flesh that didn’t want to give. 

I can still feel the pain.

The fear. 

A stab so cold.. so icy– it darts up your spine like a snake sinking its teeth in its prey 

every nerve ending alight with wretched disgust, 

a spark dancing across your body, burning with the teeth of a thousand scattered glass shards. 

But I could not scream in fear they would mistake the sound of agony for pleasure. 

I could only obey. 

I was a child. 

It meant nothing. 

For my whole life, I was taught what love shouldn’t feel like. 

I was told my body wasn’t mine, how it was raised from the surf– how my curves echoed the crashing waves,

 how I looked so beautiful when my clothes weren’t on.

I lost count of how many hands have laid claim on my body. 

I gave up counting a long time ago. 

I let them take, and take, and take

And I would give, and give, and give.

Marking my body as if I was something they could own, drawing constellations under finger-pads, tracing burning skin, chasing stars that had fallen all too soon.  

They knew every inch of my body– more than I knew my own. 

They would take my hips, graze my legs, purchase my lips, roam my breasts– 

everything was theres to take. 

All except my heart, the only thing left that was mine, untouched solely because it was out of their reach. 

The heart that beat less with each touch, that died along with the flame, that grew numb to all in feeling. 

It stopped beating long before I died. 

Back when I was a child. 

For them it meant nothing. 

For me, it meant everything.