No, stop, I can’t.

These words spew from my mouth like the hot lava that you left under my skin. When you held me down and poured it in.

Flesh held tight in your grip, gagging on the flame, hot to the touch

The ash that flew from your anger has become so dense that even I believed you were God and I was the one who had fallen from grace.

So dense that no one believed me when you ground my face into the wall.

Block out the sun and ice will fall, but no ocean water will ever cool me, no ice will ever freeze me.

I am burning, my insides are boiling in a river of fire that no man will ever quench.

My surface has cooled and hardened and I protect myself now.

Listen to me now.

I have the power that you do not.

The people in this town will blame me and her and the clothes we choose and everything but you for being to close when you blew.

I always enjoyed a walk in the park at dusk when the setting sun turns the sky my grandmother’s favorite shade of orange.

But now I keep my head low and count the cracks on the sidewalk to forget about what happened. I carry a knife and my pretty pink mace. I comfort myself because I know it can spray 20 ft and I know it takes me exactly 7 minutes and 33 seconds to get from the bus stop to my front porch, but I never know if you will be there waiting for me until I turn the corner and I see the potted flowers that keep me company.

With every caress filled with love I flinch with fear that he is you under a mask.

I will forever scorch the flowers that brush past me.

I am a fire that will burn until you are extinguished for good.

Until you wake up every morning and hate the beast you see in the mirror and wish you could die a death better than the one you are slipping into. Better than succumbing to the darkness that leaks out of your pores.

I cannot remain quiet again. Every touch reminds me of your bones. Every breath reminds me of the sweat that dripped from your brow while you were rutting above me for hours. Every whisper I hear is your voice in my ear saying you’ll fix me.

You are not a repair man.

You are not a candy man.

You are not a godsend, someone to look up to.

You are garbage beneath my feet.

You are a cigarette butt flicked from a car going 80 miles an hour heading somewhere far far away from this backwards town

where a rapist is revered and victims are locked away inside ourselves in cells made of our rib cages and barely beating hearts.

I wish I could go there, but no such place exists.

You and your brothers speckle this world like the fungus that eats the leaves of healthy apple trees.

And I long for the day when I can eat an apple with out the fear of biting into a fat black worm.