This girl I knew once,

She said it started with a close friend

someone she thought she could trust.

 

She was young and naïve

so young,

everything had become black and dark

the space around her kept getting smaller;

She was trapped; she knocked

Banging and banging,

trying to find her way through

this darkness she keeps fighting.

 

No. she repeats

No.

 

She refuses to let this control her life

but yet, it was her he left vulnerable

written all over.

 

She had a mark she couldn’t erase.

The boy that night took what wasn’t his

and it was her who deserved it.

That’s what she heard.

 

Everyone said, everyone assured her

It’s over, its fine, and maybe you shouldn’t have let him do it

as if it was a choice she controlled.

And maybe it was, she thought.

With more of society screaming at her

with more of the enemy grabbing and pulling,

of being more of just “who they are”

There wasn’t air, there was no warmth.

Yet it was all a big secret for the fear of being more blamed for something she already thought she caused.

 

It was something she was never getting back, she knew.

It was all hidden deeply stuck in the cracks of her skin

and eventually she lost herself in the heaps of words they said

 

Empty now

drenched in dark black, hair to her knees

to hide her face,

her scars,

curled up into nothing, no one will find her.

No one will even know they should look

No one will even try.

 

And that’s okay she thought

because deep inside she asks herself

“What does it matter that people help me?”

“What does it matter that a dumb, used up girl lives amongst all these perfect people?”

 

So that was it, the time

the day her parents, the ones who helped leave marks on their own daughter

finally came to notice her

but only noticed the corpse seeping liquid into the water and the little capsules of “help” scattered to the floor.

 

It was a “shame.”

Her friends, the ones who blamed her

the peoples who “loved her,” the ones who never noticed.

They came to see her perfect body locked up, ready to be brought down.

 

They said they cared

They said her story was a tragedy --

A girl sunk down by her past

but only a tragedy they couldn’t imagine

and if only

if only someone could’ve stopped her before she wasted her precious youth

they said.

 

And now I ask you

I beg of you to answer

but not to me

Answer

to the person you ignore

Answer

to the person you don’t notice

Answer:

What will you say?