When I was 9, my parents separated, to be divorced 4 years later after strung out custody hearings and he said/she said bullshit in avoidance of signing one simple document.For the entire month of May that year, I did not see my mother. I only knew she had left and according to my father, she was never coming back. That month, I grew up.I cooked and I cleaned and I took care of a household with a grown man, my brother, three dogs, and a cat. I was no longer a child in my own brain. I was a woman, a house maker, a mother to a child I never birthed. A parent to a man who created me.I also lost my innocents in this month. A drunken stupor drug my father out from the garage and me from my cleaning duties to be defiled on a bedroom floor. Left to clean up my own blood. Salt water only smears it.I had no real memories of this month until I was 15. The March I remembered stayed cold, and by May my life was a blizzard. I felt like I had no breath left for myself between therapy sessions and testimonies. I was frozen in guilt and shame for a storm I hadn’t caused.My case never went to trial. I had no witnesses, I never sought medical treatment, I never had a chance to go to the police when it happened, because I was 9 years old in my own home. I was not a woman, I was a helpless child on the puppet strings of responsibility with no one pulling me up.A pulse monitor connected to a sheet of paper with lines scribbled on it kept me from receiving the justice I deserved. Evidence based in the faith that a drunk can remember what he had done over powers a teenage girl sobbing mid-panic attack in a jailhouse confession room. This was my rebirth as a woman. The cold grip of my reality swallowed me whole and to this day, my eyelashes still feel frozen. ‘No evidence’ and ‘false accusation’ are scarred in my back, a weight I always carry with me.And I see this 20 time over. In court rooms on television. In the Supreme Court justice, isn’t there irony in that? To hold the title of justice where none was given. To hold a person hostage where no consent was given.All of us are still held hostage. We are captive to our own fears and memories. Our fates decided at a judge’s table we were never invited a seat at. Our megaphones can’t work when they’re stuffed full with male privilege. People don’t hear a gunshot with a silencer on the barrel. I fear we’ll all be dead before you finally hear us. There’s nothing noble in listening to the echo of the dead, only believing the living