Content Note: This work contains depictions of trauma and sexual assault.

His control.
His pleasure.
His exploration.
His experiment.
My pain.
My guilt.
My shame.
My mask.

Betrayed by body.
Betrayed by silence.
Betrayed by mocking laughter.
Betrayed by disbelief.

That night comes in waves,
fragments of memory crashing into my veins,
capsizing me, pulling me down.
Relentless, swirling.
It takes everything not to drown.

I remember the words, his wicked eyes,
those seizures, so siren like, 
those movements, so inviting, so graceful.

No grace, nor peace for me.
Involuntary muscle spasms,
bones and tendons cracking like a possessed doll.

Muffled screams of pain & confusion —
my call swallowed by the tide.
Sobbing and clawing within a mind
fading in and out of consciousness.

Eyes seeing in nightmarish flashes,
His grabbing.
His pulling. 
His thrusting.

My vessel stuck in contortion,
mind stuck in tortuous darkness.
Every fiber of being willing to fight, to flee —
but no power was mine.

Violent storms crash over and over,
until nothing.

Nothing.

Bones returned to flesh,
and mind to soul.
i hid in the darkness that night.
i hid in the haze & dissociation of seizure.
Pretended not to know the devil at my side, 
until light was my escape, my saviour.

I raged.
I pleaded.
I spoke what i could.

Told my sickness was a problem,
that memory is a game, a trickster, 
No proof would ever be held.

No therapy would calm those swells,
so violent, so free,
I was cast adrift in whirlpools of pain and bitterness.
Memories scored deep into muscle & sinew,
each movement carved in heaviness & ache.

So to the winds I cast you,
I will not drown in storms anew.
The deep has its own justice.
It does not hurry.
It swallows what corrodes its shore.
And I will not look away.