Seven Years
It has been said that all your cells (with some exceptions) are replaced every seven years.
Every seven years, you are a new person.
I was thirteen years old when he would touch me.
I can't say that you never touched me when I hit my fourteeth birthday
Because some of the cells were already tainted with you.
It has been one thousand, one hundred, fifty-two days since you ruined me for seven years.
I must wait another one thousand, four hundred, four to have completely washed you away.
You told me you were sorry
You told me I should've said no a little more clearly
I cannot regenerate the brain cells that you have tainted with your face and words and voice
And when I cower behind my mother because the check out boy looks like you
I know feel the one thousand, one hundred, fifty-two days,
Everytime I talk about it, every time I talk about you
I try and feel liberated
Knowing someone else knows my story
Knowing someone else believes me
And it only takes one passive aggressive status where you comment
And I can't see what you say, because I hope like hell it was the guilt you blocked me for
And not the reminders,
That I remember that I'm just like every other person who has been touched.
Who has been silenced.
Who has been held with their hands above their head and had whispered apologies.
It has been one thousand, one hundred, and fifty-two days since the last time you touched me.
I still need to tell the therapist what happened.