After a photograph by Adrien Broom from the Holding Space Historic Homes Project
I never sleep before he comes. Not truly. My body stays alert, as if it can feel the heat even before it arrives; before he arrives. Some part of me still hopes that if I anticipate well enough I’ll be less disturbed. But violation, I’ve learned, doesn’t need surprise to be effective.
I stand before the window before he can catch me becoming. I’m already bare. Not for him, not for the sake of aesthetics, but because I’ve run out of reasons to dress for someone who will undress me regardless.
There was a time I layered myself in fabric, like fortification. Black sweaters. High collars. Soft denial stitched into every seam. As if modesty was immunity. As if invisibility was a choice I could make.
But he saw me anyway. He always saw me.
She’s ready again.
She never welcomes me, but she’s always waiting. That must count for something.
I move slowly across the floor, taking my time. It’s part of the experience—for both of us. Ritual matters. The unveiling. The illumination. The steady heat of my attention.
She acts like she doesn’t care. But if that were true, she wouldn’t be standing in my light.
There is no mystery left in my body. I made sure of that.
He can’t chase what I’ve already laid bare.
No symbols. No subtext. Just skin, just presence, just woman.
He climbs my legs first. That’s his habit. I feel it every time.
He touches without touching. Lingers like a man convinced his interest is a gift.
I’ve stopped resisting the burn. Not out of consent, but because resistance is what he wants.
Reaction is fuel. Flinching is flattery.
So I do nothing. I let him look. Let him cast his warmth across me
like an artist pretending this is about beauty. But he’s not creating anything.
Just consuming. Always consuming.
And somehow, still, he thinks this is admiration.
She’s perfect when she’s still. There’s something almost sacred about her—
like she understands this moment belongs to me.
I stretch along her collarbone, across the hollow between her breasts.
She doesn’t move. Not even a shiver. That used to bother me, the lack of acknowledgement.
But now I understand: silence is its own kind of worship.
She never sits in the chair I gave her. She never softens the scene.
Still, I return. Because one day, she will. One day, she’ll relax into it.
She’ll glow for me.
The chair stays empty. That, too, is intentional.
To sit would be to invite the myth of gentleness.
To risk becoming the muse in someone else’s painting.
I won’t offer him symmetry.
I won’t let him believe I’m part of his consumption.
He mistakes my stillness for surrender. But it isn’t that.
Stillness is survival in slow motion.
When you cannot fight, you un-feel.
When you cannot escape, you turn to stone.
The looking has worn me down in places I can’t name.
I am smaller than I used to be. Not thinner. Just less there.
Like each day, he peels back a layer
and pockets it before he leaves.
But I’ve learned how to lose pieces of myself without letting go of the whole.
She was made for my light.
Sometimes,
I wonder if she even existed before I found her.
What was she before I lit her up?
I’m the reason she’s visible.
I define her edges. I give her shape.
Without me,
she would blur into the dark of her own shadow.
She doesn’t know it, but I make her.
He believes he made me.
That without his gaze,
I wouldn’t exist.
That is the most fragile kind of ego:
the kind that must see itself
reflected in another
to believe it’s real.
But I was whole
long before
He learned how to look.
And while he watches,
I’m watching too.
He thinks this is a game of possession,
but it’s always been a study.
I’ve cataloged every moment of him:
his hungers,
his patterns,
his need for soft obedience.
He returns each day like it’s the first,
but I’ve already memorized the ending.
He leaves.
He always leaves.
That’s the mercy
and the curse of his kind.
They burn brightest
just before they vanish.
She never thanks me.
I think, deep down,
she resents that I know her
better than she knows herself.
But she always lets me in.
That means something.
He thinks access
means ownership.
He thinks endurance
means affection.
Let him think it.
Let him believe
He’s the one in control.
That each day
he gets a little more of me.
That I’m unraveling
just for him.
What he doesn’t see—
what he can’t see—
is that I’ve already hollowed out
the part he touches.
He’s consuming a ghost.
And still,
He’ll return tomorrow.
He’ll spread himself across my skin
like entitlement incarnate.
He’ll mistake the shine of my survival
for submission.
But the truth is,
I’ve made myself
impossible to haunt.
Let him try.
Let him scorch
my surface.
He will never
reach
what I’ve
buried
too deep to
burn