This Is An Open Letter To My Rapist

You with your glossy eyes and smirk turned upwards, contorted like a snake.

You with your breath reeking of alcohol from 15 feet away, the sides of your mouth dripping with stale beer.

You don’t get to sway over across the bar on your stumbling feet, knees quaking with excitement as you struggle to focus on my body.

You don’t get to place your slimy hands on me. You don’t get to slither me away from my friends, from my good time glimmering with sparkles and twinkling laughs. You don’t get to wash off the apple red flush in my cheeks or my sunshine bright smile. You don’t get to run your scales across my skin and replace my softness with gooseflesh.

You don’t get to take advantage of my trusting ways, my kind heart, my young soul, or my youthful body because they are mine and I do not belong to you nor will I ever.

So I’m taking it all back.

I will take back the excitement I felt before reality set in and I realized what you are. I will take back the moans I foolishly allowed to escape from my lips. I will take back the sharp pain from your hands beating down on the most sensitive places of me. I will take back my screams.

I will take back the hair you ripped from my scalp, each strand that got stuck between your fingers I want sewn back into its rightful place. I will take back the blood and skin that you forced the hotel carpet to burn from my knees.

I will take back the tenderness between my legs that you stole away and carelessly replaced with purple bruises. I will take back the blood you made me suck off your fingers, the blood that dripped down my legs, the blood that pooled on the bed, the blood that once allowed my heart to beat.

I will take back the tears I cried in the car ride home, the tears my best friends cried, the tears that rolled down my mother and grandmother’s cheeks like rain.

I will take back the hospital visit and the arguments and the questions and the blood draws and the urine tests and yes I will take back the pelvic exam because after I swore no one would ever touch me again, I was forced to allow another specimen to violate me.

I will take back the security you stole, the confidence you stole. I will take back the innocence you robbed me of, the womanhood you robbed me of.

I will take it all back because not one single shred of who I am belongs with you in your dirty earthen den of sin and deception.

I will take it all back because I am worth so much more than what you took me for.