“you get what you ask for”
said my kindergarten teacher,
my mother,
my babysitter,
my best friend.
as a child I grew up
understanding that to get what
I wanted,
I had to ask for it.
now I think I'm hearing the same words again
from different mouths.
but it sounds different.
“you were asking for it.”
if I was asking him
to pick me off of the ground,
grab me by the waist and
hold me down hard enough
so the sounds coming out of my mouth
would be mistaken as hums to the song playing from his phone,
then I would not have said
“stop!"
"enough!"
"this is crazy!”
but I did.
I said all of that.
I did not ask for constant nightmares every night.
I did not ask for guilt to weighs down my bones.
I did not ask to live like a stranger in my own body.
I did not ask to feel unlovable, dirty, impure.
I did not ask to lose all my friends.
I did not ask to be a statistic.
I did not ask to be called a petty shit or attention whore.
I did not ask to think of hurting myself to help control my pain.
all I am asking for
is love.
for someone to hear me,
for someone to listen
without thinking I am being “too loud”.
for when the victim makes too much noise,
they just must be
asking
for something.
all I asked was
for him to stop.
but I did not get what I asked for.
