I can still see the blue veins looking at me through the skin in your neck from the hatred that wraps all the way down from your hands to my wrists. I close my eyes to dream peacefully, yet all I see is the black in your eyes swell as mine blur under you. The words you spit down my throat were not at all a happy birthday. Did you realize it was my birthday when you were so angry I found out you were loving another woman? Are you mad because I realized you are exactly who I thought you would be? I always imagine the words I would say to you if I could just muster up what little courage I had. Facing an abuser is never as easy as you think before it happens. That would never happen to me, a little girl tells her mom as she tucks her in to bed. Her mom smiles through broken eyes of all the men she’s fought off to be able to love her own child. She knows the world is not what it should be, she knows the evil that tears people apart.
Never did she want her daughter to grow up in a world where men use their strength to overpower the vulnerability of love. But you did it. And I’m here wishing I was as strong then as I am now. So I write what I could not say. You will never overpower me again. You will never see another piece of me again. I am no longer in your world. And I realize, I should not be asking you why you did what you did, I should ask myself why I thought I deserved it.
Carleigh Hayes Gore