400 Days Since I Knew You

And I know you more than I ever wanted to

TW: Rape

It has been four hundred days.

Four. Hundred. Days.

Four hundred days since I started to remember what you did. Since the memories of you I locked away came back with fervor.

Four hundred days I’ve remembered your taste, your touch, your voice and words, your smell.

Four hundred days you’ve lived in my head vividly. With me in the mornings when I wake. Smothering me at night when I try to sleep.

I imagine there was a boy once who would have delighted at knowing that I had thought of him this much, for this long, again and again. But you’re a man now. Or maybe a monster. It’s hard to know through the veneer of the life you’ve curated.

Tell me, my haunting, how does it feel to know you live with me so? That all these years later, you got exactly what you wanted, just not in the way you’d hoped?

I wonder how often in four hundred days have you spared me a thought? Do I live with you as you live with me? Do our thoughts and memories dance to the same song in different, lonely halls?

I wonder if you dwell on it, how much space I take within you? What shape of me you hold?

Do you remember my taste on your tongue? My words in your ear?

Do you remember my screams? My tears? My pleading? My warring?

Do you remember me bare, helpless, swiping thrashing and fighting you until the end? Or has it twisted and coalesced into something you tell yourself was never that bad? Never that evil?

Maybe something even special.

I can guess you’ve wondered many times how much space you take up within me. If I remembered, how much or how little, what I thought of you. And I imagine you’d want to know where I stand now.

But you don’t get the privilege.

You don’t get to know me now as you once caught a glimpse of. I’m as loud and as open as I was then. Louder, even. It doesn’t take a whole lot to get to know me in my fullness.

But you won’t have the delights.

You had me once. One night where it was true and unrestrained. Until you tore it apart with your clumsy fists. That’s all you get of me.

But I know you.

I saw the real you. The one you never wanted anyone to see. The one you let yourself be when you thought no one was looking.

Over the last four hundred days where you’ve festered in my thoughts and wormed your way through me again and again, I’ve come to know you a great deal. I see who you are. You’ll never know the trueness of who I am. This is the closest you’ll ever get.

Better savour it.