His voice cracks on the last word—not dramatically, just a small fracture, like a hairline break in glass.
“That’s why I—” He stops. Swallows again. “That’s why I can’t… let you put your hands where they were.”
Oh my God. It’s there. Why didn’t I see it before. His neck, his back…the avoidance of touch there. It’s the body’s memory of being pinned from behind, held down, overpowered.
Multiple hands. Multiple angles. Multiple times.
The realization lands like a stone through glass.
Men. Not one. Them.
I feel it, the exact moment my rib cage cracks open. My hands, still resting on his chest, start to shake. “I’m sorry,” I whisper, biting back sobs. “I’m so sorry.”
Tears burn behind my eyes so fast I can’t blink them away.
“Don’t cry for me, Cherry-red.” He brushes my cheek, catching a tear. “I’m not worth your tears.”
“Reth—”
“I’m not worth anything soft. I’ve never been. But you…” His thumb strokes once more, slow, deliberate, like he’s memorizing the feel of my skin before it’s taken away. “You’re the first thing in my life that ever made me wish I was.”
He swallows, the sound loud in the quiet.
“So if you’re gonna cry, don’t cry for what they did to me. Cry for what I’m gonna do to myself if I ever let myself believe I could keep you.”
The words land like a fist to the chest, and he doesn’t look away. He doesn’t flinch. He just waits like he’s expecting me to pull away.
Instead, I lean close, pressing my forehead against his.
“I’m not crying for what they did to you,” I murmur. “I’m crying because you think that’s all you are. That you’re only the damage. You’re so much more than that.”
He sucks in a breath like the words physically hurt him—sharp, ragged, almost a sob he tries to choke back. With his busted hand, he cups the side of my face, and a tremor spreads through me as his thumb eases over my tears.
“I don’t know how to be anything else,” he whispers, voice so low it’s almost lost in the drip of water.
From the way he presses his forehead harder against mine, it’s like he’s trying to fuse us together, like if he lets go, the moment will shatter.
His breath is warm against my lips, uneven, and his hand tightens just a fraction on my face, his other arm wrapping around my waist, pulling me closer until there’s no space left between us.
“I never meant to drag you into this. If I could go back to that very first night I saw you, I?—”
“Tell me.” I inch back, just a little. “Tell me…about that night.”
There’s a long pause, and he reaches into his shirt pocket, revealing a cracked, pink, heart-shaped lollipop. “The night you changed my life was the night you gave me this.”
October 31st, 2022
I want someone to find poetry in me, even where I don’t see it.
Not poetry, exactly. Hope, maybe? Just something they need to believe in. The specific thing that makes a person stop in the middle of whatever they were doing and think—oh. There it is. I didn’t know I was looking for that until I found it.
I want to matter to someone in a way that can’t be undone. Not because I did something extraordinary. Not because I was particularly brilliant or beautiful or impressive that day. Just because I was there.
Because I was me.
Because something about the simple, unremarkable fact of my existence landed in someone and changed the shape of things.
Permanently. Irreversibly.
