I was a sheet of glass and you were a hammer, swinging round your male entitlement. Screaming like a spoilt child as I tugged the bottle from your grasp as you told me, “to be careful of the boys”, as I wobbled on the cobbles not from intoxication but trying to feel like a woman in my heels…because you told me to. Am I failing to remember the moment when my chapped lips gave you permission to put your filthy hands where they do not belong? Waves of resistance and lightning through my veins as I pulled away and broke the surface of the murky waters you held me under, but even now I still feel the lingering sensations of your grubby fingers as they bruised my skin. My lungs collapsed and I fell to pieces but even at my lowest, crying on the street and sleepless nights, I knew you fucked with the wrong girl. The list of names grew and my fear twisted into anger, knotting in the pit of my stomach and rising up to the back of my throat, I had to speak.The ironic part is that you told me to "be careful of the boys" but it was YOU I should have been careful of. I was screaming into a crowd of people who had covered their ears and found myself lost; fading into the background and feeling like a grain of sand compared to the universe. But I consumed the universe and the void within me was filled, I felt at peace and I knew witihn myself that I was not going to be the tarnished, damaged goods you left behind.