Requiem

Shorts and a t-shirt. 

I am 17, and have resigned myself to the fact my only value is my body. I promise men online that I am 18, aren't I such a good boy, such a rare spectacle for your lustful eyes. 

I message a woman who will later compare me to my mother, and cry into her inbox. 
She soothes me. 

I am 17 and I am staying in my friend's house and I cannot see a future where I exist as a (hu)man.

"What were you wearing?" 
Jeans and a My Chemical Romance tee.

I am 16 and he is 16 and we are in the brush across the street from the high school. Three hundred mosquitos bite me and there are leaves in my hair. He won't let me kiss him. He keeps calling me a girl. 

I think I hate him. 

I keep coming back.

I think I hate myself. 

 

"What were you wearing?"
Pajamas, I think. 

What I do remember is I was 14 and he was 44 and it was the first time I ever told him no.

He got meaner after that. I should've kept my mouth shut. 

(Should've would've could've) 

"What were you wearing?" 
A dress. A shirt and shorts. Who knows? Who cares?

I am 13, 12, 11, 10, and he is 30 years older than I am, and my hair is long. 
He won't let me cut it. He keeps my baby teeth in a jar. I hear him fight with his wife and jealousy burns in me. 

I could be a better wife. 

(I'll hate myself forever for thinking it.) 

 

"What were you wearing?"
A ratty shirt and shorts and flip-flops. 

I am 8 years old. 
I'm playing video games on the computer. My mother's asleep in the hospital bed. 

My father is heavy. Too heavy for me. He was too heavy in the hotel room after Mom ran away one time, too. 

His feelings, his sins, have always been too great for me. 

"What were you wearing?" 
A VeggieTales shirt. 

I am 7. I am in the bathroom.
My father is there too. The tile floor hurts my knees. 

I am a good Christian kid. This is just a game. I am a good kid. Honor thy mother and thy father. 
Later he will tell my mother he heard God's voice, heard that I pray to Satan.

My mother will beat me.

I am an evil child. 

 

"What were you wearing?" 
A towel. 

I am 5 or 6. 
My father asks me if I want to play a game while Mommy's in the shower. 
I shake my head. I tell him I don't want to have a baby.

I shouldn't even know what that means.

 

"What were you wearing?" 
Pajamas. 

I am 4. I am in bed and I am awoken by something cold, wet, slimy. 
I look down. My father tells me to be quiet. 

This is our little secret. Our little game. 

Years later I will ask him about it and he will tell me he played it with me as a baby. 
Years after that I will realize I was never pure. I was tainted from birth. 
Caine, marked as a monster, cast from the Garden. 
I was born out of reach of the love of Jesus. 

Maybe that's why I could never truly feel it.


 

"What were you wearing?" 
A diaper.

I am an infant and he is 42. 

My biological father was born in 1965. 
The other man, the one who will own me as a teenager, was born in 1978. 

Being put in foster care didn't stop it, you see. 

 

"What were you wearing?" 
A diaper. 

I am an infant and he is a grown man.

"It won't hurt them. They'll never know. Right?" 
right right right right right

(wrong so so very wrong) 

"What were you wearing?" 
Nothing. 

I am a fetus, in my mother's womb. 

Nothing bad has happened to me.