Their hands crawl across my skin and I cry at them to stop, but they never do.
They never rest, do they?
They tell me to keep quiet, that I'm safe, we're only playing.
I don't want to play,
I want to live, but I'm trying to be okay and I'm fighting to stay alive.
These hands burn, leaving scars only visible to me,
And when I try to hide them, they burn brighter than before.
Nobody can see them, nobody can hear me begging for help.
I'm pleading for their hands to be true to their words, to remain safe and pull me from this darkness.
But why would they help, when they're the same hands that put me here,
Locking me away and pretending everything's okay when it's not.
In the shower I learn to scrub my skin until my body feels like mine again.
When will the dirt and grime from
someone ELSE'S crime,
Committed on MY body,
Ever wash away?
The pills I take keep me awake at night,
But it's better when they do.
The nightmares are inescapable, even when my no-longer-bright eyes struggle to stay open,
Afraid of what they'll see in the dark.
Their hands tear at my flesh, ripping me apart again,
And I fight.
But what good is it, when their hands outnumber you and you know you're falling apart?
How much longer can you battle the hellhounds at your feet?
Home.
I can hear them scream and fight through the bedroom walls.
Those thin walls that never protected,
Those thin walls that did nothing but hide the secrets that were begging to be let out.
The marks on my body burn, they yearn for the hands to take their turn on something else, anything else.
Something other than me, and my baby sister in the next room over, listening to me cry.
