I
pick me up
I can still remember the sickening warmth of his breath, polluted by the reek of cigarettes, scraping my neck and I flinch from the absent feeling.
His hands had held me down as he’d moved back and forth above me; his chest, covered with hair, had once been pressing against my tender breasts. I think my tear ducts quit their job at that moment like how my lungs seemed to have momentarily failed me when he’d penetrated me, only letting out a gasp as the sound of my heartbeat exploded in my ears and the stinging pain shot through me. I'd screamed, but that had fallen— and would keep falling— upon deaf ears that accepted the monetary value thrown their way.
The walls around me feel suffocating, the air is recycled and I can hear the soft sobs I release bounce off the walls and into my ears. I feel smothered by the darkness that encloses around me and perhaps the metallic taste that still lingers in my mouth, a result of the hard blow his curled knuckles had delivered to my face, is proof that darkness might slowly be killing me, yet I cannot find the strength within me to stand up and walk out of the door that I know has been left open; I have yet to hear the key turn or have my ears failed me, too?
Maybe it's because of the mean-spirited words he'd uttered that broke down the protective walls I walled myself in or maybe it's because I can't face what's out there without my walls or I can't face the world without me. [Maybe I don't want to leave. Lie.]
I lost myself when he rode me. I was destroyed when he entered: the entry I'd involuntarily allowed him tainted me with the sensation of feeling dirty, used, cheaper than a crumbled up dollar note that has been broken at the edges and contains rips in the centre, making it of no use. He left me numb; in all ways one can feel numb without actually feeling, but knowing that they are feeling numb.
It broke my hope— painfully, like a virgin's hymen and it was done at the slow speed lovers would take when making love, but we're not lovers.
Lovers are in love with each other, I hardly like him (that's the polite way of saying it), and love is something beautiful. Something that is felt as you're soaring through the sky that suddenly looks bluer than blue, your feet daintily caressing the soft clouds; something that makes you aware of birds chirping louder and fields of flowers that are enigmatically blooming all at once; something that makes you grow to be a better person not something that withers the romantic in you and leaves a dead carcass of what you used to be; something that overcomes the depth of oceans, the sound of rain creating a pitter-patter tune against tear-stained skin and the once-loved dreams that are barrelling off-course into a forgotten wasteland deep in the unknown corners of my mind.
Maybe I can't leave, because I know that the freedom I'll get on the other side of the door is a ghastly one that will haunt me with sadness, taunting me into a cycle where I'll give into the strong drugs the human race will use to dope me and I'll believe the wise lies of Ecstasy when I'm soaring twenty thousand and one kilometres high into the non-existent sky I've created to only come crashing down to reality; I don't want a moment of bliss, I want a lifetime of happiness. The former is all I have.
He did not kiss me and I'm glad; my lips are the only thing pure my body posseses and I'll make sure it stays that way.
My fingers feel the insides of my thighs and I feel the flakes of my dried blood. I try rolling over onto my side, but when I do, my ribs send out a shooting pain through me and when I close my eyes tightly, trying to block it all out, I remember the blows I took from him when I refused to give myself up. I'm battered: I will see the bruises at breaking dawn. I'm weak: in my spirit; through mentality; it's laced emotionally within me; physically. Worst of all, I feel dirty and second-hand and not the antique kind of second-hand.
Why did I let him touch me?
The fluorescent light bulb flickers on above me pulling me away from sleep's edge where I was ready to fall into its oblivion.
This is how the other he picks me up: with a certain gentleness nestled somewhere in his slight roughness and I'm thankful for it, because I'm bruised, frail, battered and I desperately need gentle. The other he wraps his arms around me and carries me out of that dreadful room and the blood-stained bed. There is a soothing rhythm in his heartbeats and it creates a hypnotic lullaby against the sound of screams and shouts and slapping and knuckles meeting faces. I think about safety and a spark of hope— a hope against hope— fills me up, dangerously, and I know that reality will pull its trigger and I'll combust from the bullet that will pop my hope.
Reality can wait for tomorrow; for now, I'll rest in his pick me up.
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