I love the version of me nobody else sees. How I talk, how I joke, how I disappear into my own little world without trying to please anyone. How there are parts of me only I can understand.
Emptying out of my mother’s belly was my first act of disappearance, learning to shrink for a family who likes their daughters invisible was the second.
My knees pried open by cousins and uncles and men. My body touched by all the wrong people that even in a bed full of safety I'm shit scared.
I have sadness living in places sadness shouldn’t live.
The rape will tear you in half but it will not end you.
I don't have much childhood pictures because I was always hiding from him, the beloved family uncle who always found a way to force himself on me.