The Welcomed Absence of Innocence
I will bite through your fingers.
I paint your living room from memory. I bought a large canvas with the intent of painting it. I knew you were leaving soon and I had to capture a fleeting memory of the horrors I witnessed through you.
I remember the room perfectly. Off white walls with decaying paint and woodwork. The carpet stained with Dorito dust, cat vomit, and resin. Two red chairs and a broken mint couch lay lopsided in the space, always being rearranged.
The house smells of disease and pot and rotting. I spent four months of my life here. Fucking you. Feeding you. Keeping you alive and emotionally subdued. At the cost of my own life.
It’s been a year since all of it. I don’t wake up to cum stains and an angry voice. I don’t hear the throaty fierceness of your wrath when I make the slightest mistake. I don’t miss it.
I finish the orange brushstrokes and paint your looming figure in the doorway. Hidden to the casual viewer, but a poignant reminder to me, to never let someone abuse me the way you did again.
—
It’s now December. I have friends and resources and support. My two best friends, Jaden and Audra, keep me on my toes and make sure I’m stable and sane before making bad decisions. The bad decisions we do make, we make together. My boyfriend isn’t a 34 year and violent. He’s ever so gentle and sweet. If he yells at me I know I can fight back without danger.
—
I used to be so pure. A church girl. I was beautiful and I knew it, but I didn’t pay my way with it. My hair, natural, long and curly. My body, untouched by human hands. My lungs and bloodstream, pure of toxins. I was like Eve in the garden. Living with the best of intentions. Shiny and new. But I wanted to taste that forbidden fruit and I fell.
Adam and Eve isn’t the perfect analogy. I was forced into a lot of the bullshit I experienced in 2017. But I don’t miss feeling clean like I used to. I forge my way into the darkness, not blindly but with a torch. I set boundaries and safeguards. I know what I’m capable of and I know how to survive. I’m not afraid of loud voices. I’m not sensitive to a snarky remark. If somebody bothers me I cut them out. I was thrown to the wolves and returned leading the pack.
With a cigarette between my lips, it’s the welcomed absence of innocence.
About the Creator
Reagan 💕
Writer - Poet
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