I know this pain

The first time, I was a little girl.

Too little to know what to call what was

happening.

Too young to name what my body was enduring.

My sister's father would come into our room early in the morning.

He'd lift one of our legs, slowly, gently, like a twisted kind of choosing.

When it was me, he'd take me to the other room

ー

no words, no warmth-

just a motion with his hand for me to lie down.

He'd pull down my underwear.

He'd grab the pink baby lotion bottle-the one meant for softness and skin and love

—

and rub it on my private area while his own was exposed,

rubbing against the air, or himself, or sometimes, me.

I didn't understand.

I didn't know what it meant.

I just knew to be still.

Don't move. Don't speak. Don't cry.

But sometimes, when it hurt-

a Strange, sharp pain I had no name for—

I'd let out a small cry.

Quiet Barely there.

That's when he'd pause.

For just a second.

Then go back to what he was doing— but slower.

As if slowing down could make it less wrong.

As if I wouldn't remember it differently because he was more careful.

That was my first time being touched like that.

My first time feeling pain where no child ever should.

My first time learning that silence could feel safer than screaming.

I grew up.

Had children of my own.

Lived through things that should've taken me out.

I carried pain like a bag I couldn't put down-but I moved forward anyway.

When my daughter's father became abusive, I left.

Pregnant, with a nine-month-old in my arms, I bounced between shelters and domestic violence centers.

I was sick, tired, worn thin-but determined to survive.

To protect what was mine.

Still,

on the Fourth of July, with nowhere else to go, I found myself back at his door.

He let me in.

And almost immediately,

he led me to the wide gray loveseat-the one l used to sit on to escape the chaos in our home.

That couch once cradled me when I wrote, when I drowned myself in music,

when I tried to disappear without leaving.

Now, it held my body again.

But this time, not in safety.

He pulled me in, and we had sex.

The kind where your body participates because it doesn't know how not to.

Because survival has its own language.

Because sometimes it feels safer to comply than to risk what might happen if you say no.

And as he moved, I felt it.

That same pain.

The one I hadn't felt since I was a little girl.

In that moment—

mid-thrust, mid-moan—

I looked up.

Straight ahead was a window, dark from the night,

lit just enough by the fireworks exploding outside.

And in that reflection, I saw myself.

Still.

Face blank.

Eyes wide.

And the moan that escaped me— it wasn't pleasure.

It was recognition.

I know this pain.

I've been here before.

But this time, I knew what it was.

The reflection looked back at me

like it had been waiting years to be noticed.

It said:

This is the same thing.

The same demon.

Just in a different house.

With a different couch.

But the same rope tight around your throat and your womanhood at once.

I let out a sound I didn't recognize.

Not a scream. Not a sob.

A release.

An ending.

And in that moment, something inside me whispered:

This will never happen again.

I didn't fight him off.

I didn't cry.

But I left.

Not physically, not yet.

But emotionally. Spiritually.

My soul had already walked away.

That was my second first time.

The first time was silence.

The second time was clarity.

And this time, I wasn't just touched.

I was awakened.

I saw the demon.

And I chose to never return to it again.