After isn’t After

They said that my body belonged to me.
But that day, it didn’t.
Hands that weren’t invited,
weight that crushed the air from my lungs,
a voice that was not my own filling the whole room.

I remember the ceiling.
Every crack, every shadow.
Counting the tiles because I couldn’t count on trust.
I wanted to disappear completely.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted time to freeze before it broke me.

People talk about “after” as if its a clear line.
But “after” seeps into all aspects of my life
the way I walk down streets,
the way I flinch at laughter,
the way I lock my bedroom door at night 
as if wood and metal could keep the memories out.

It is not just what was taken from me that day,
but what was left behind.
Shame that does not belong to me,
fear that grows each second I think about what he did to me,
a silence that chokes.

And yet,
I speak it now.
Every word I utter breaks down the wall he constructed to confine me.
The act of naming my experience protects me from complete destruction.
Because I am still here.
I am in pieces, but I am still here.

And being here is not weakness.
It is survival.
It is defiance.
It is proof that the story they tried to write
is not the one I will live.

I name it, and in naming I close the room he used.
My body answers only to me.
I will not be the silence at the centre of my life.
I am the next line in my story.

By Isabel