**Sexual Abuse Warning**

I used to brag about idiotic things—
how I’d know if I was being abused.
“Let a man hit me,” I’d say with a grin,
“I’d leave him quicker than anything!”
“Let a man hit me,” I’d snarl,
“I’d hit him right back — in the balls too!”
I used to brag about idiotic things.
If only I knew.

I don’t know when it started,
if you ever cared for me at all,
or if the night we met you decided
I’d be right to bandage some wound.
Urgh — thinking back makes me want to hurl.
How did I fall for it?
Where did I go wrong?

Did you ever love me?
You used to say you did.
Then it became a way to get my body —
and let’s be honest,
you got my body good.

Like that night I said no.
Yet that didn’t stop you.
You slid your hands down —
I tried to fight you off my pyjamas,
I tried to fight you off my knickers.
I said no.
I said no.
I said no.
Yet that didn’t stop you.

My body froze up —
yet that didn’t stop you.
My body started trembling —
yet that didn’t stop you.
I started crying.
That’s what stopped you.

“Sorry,” you said.
But I knew you didn’t mean it.
You left the room.
You left me there —
my body still trembling.
And worse still,
you turned around
so you didn’t have to see
the hurt that engulfed me,
the disgust that overtook me,
the shame.

And if that wasn’t enough,
you took our love,
turned it into a sword,
and drove it deep into my heart.
You grinned when I told you
you hurt me.
What was it you said?
“It was all on me.”
That I liked it rough.
That I was playing a game.

I used to brag about idiotic things,
because I thought abuse
was simply the smack of a hand.
How easy that would have been —
at least I could heal from a bruise.

Instead, I’ve lost years of my life
chasing a pathetic dream for us,
where we would be happy.
It seems so silly now.