Experience Tumblr Like Never Before
You seem like the type that would happen anyway.
I smile politely and listen to him as he went on about how sexy he thought my vulnerability was.
My trauma a commodity, a mere accessory to him.
I am the saint in the stained glass window now.
I wonder if I’m the type when he kept his hands where they were even when I asked him to stop.
The way he mistook my shrinking for permission.
My fingertips were so thin then,
Pale, peeling skin and a wrecking ball in the empty space in my chest.
I wonder if I’m the type when a man I don’t know follows me home,
The way I tried to swallow the problem, to drop my throat into a whisper.
To survive by blending, by not being the victim,
Maybe I had always asked for it.
Maybe this just happened to girls like me.
You sure it wasn’t just a shitty relationship? He asks.
I answer the boy’s question with well-practiced silence.
Give into the chokehold of this quiet dehumanizing moment I had grown so used to by now.
Whisper to my body: you know what to do.
Succumb to the numbness, lose yourself to him all over again.
I remember seeing my abuser across the train platform
the way my silence met his.
the fear twisting itself between my ribs as he grinned at me,
asked if I missed him
I watched the anger flash across his face as my silence met his rage.
I got on the next train and physically collapsed,
had a panic attack that lasted an hour.
Didn’t speak for the rest of the day.