There's a way you imagine the world after you go on a journey through Hell. You see things different from others because you know what could lie beneath the surface of a word, a movement, or a feeling.

You step back in every conversation because the way you speak comes across unflattering. You do not show life's best side. When you are questioned and commented on you smile and bite down.

You tell yourself to imagine it the way you imagined it before you walked through the rooms of monsters.

"Your first time should be special."

The first time...I try not to let myself remember it as such. The smallness of me against the bulk of you. The coaxing and the bribing. The sweet, sweet way I got sick. I couldn't even tell it had happened. I got drunk. I was drugged.

That wasn't my first time.

It doesn't count.

But it's still there as I smile and tell them, "sure."

"All kids are curious."

The dismissal of a lifetime as I listen again, and again to the way you try to alleviate the sores against my heart. The blindfold you tighten against your own eyes so you don't need to see it for what it is. Some people scream in that moment. Some people cry. I felt satisfied.

I didn't scream,

Until someone took away the drugs.

I started to scream and I never stopped.

"I didn't know. I'm sorry."

You say it and you say it so much it's like you want forgiveness. I want to put blades in your mouth and smash your cheeks between my hands every time you say it. So you could know. So you could understand. This isn't my confession so that you can be redeemed.

I know you didn't know

So why are you sorry

When you are not the one who touched me?

"Could you tell me about it?"

No.

No. No. No. No. No. No. N-

I tell myself enough already.

There's a room in my brain dedicated to the performance of those days. I don't sell tickets and I don't market my pain. What else do you want me to say? Someone touched me. I never cried. I don't know why. Like anger that slowly rises too little, too late.

"One day, it will all fade to gray."

Feelings don't fade. Not like these ones. They were never colorful in the first place, so there's nothing to fade. I don't remember it in pictures or memories. I remember it in feelings. I remember the fingers, the tongues, the privates all shoved down my throat suddenly haunting me.

I choke on phantom limbs.

I pull the trigger on my own pain.

I push down on my own wounds so I'll never forget those days.