PUNK PROSE: A Cherry Stained Futon by kniyuhmone

My mother has two sisters and while growing up boys weren’t allowed over. Not unsupervised, and especially not in the dark. But I know that’s where it happened, in the dark, like most things. Something in the way it is spoken about. 

Innocence is lost, the girl has been deflowered, Cherry has been popped? And if you can manage to get past that and haven't been told, well, it hurts too. But I was hungry for something that only lived in the dark. This thing, this right of passage, this introduction into the world of self-worth through my literal bones and body was the monster I touched myself to when no one was home. I wanted it so badly I feared it. Sex. I will never forget the irony of babysitting that night. To have been the protector of another's laughing innocence “Make sure no one burns the house down or  goes running through the hall with scissors.” But somewhere in between warming chicken nuggets, pouring red juice and fanning flames I forgot my virginity was even there. I had forgotten that it belonged to me, that it was my roar. That I could have said “Hey, that’s mine.” But he didn’t forget. And behind that door separating middle schoolers and I, the truth reigned deeply clear.someone. wanted. me. Don’t you get it? Someone did. And at 18 years old who knows a shit about self worth. But I knew a real thing was happening, a thing I’d think about years from then. It was happening, in the dark, like most things.  To surrender, you would have had to fight first, but I did neither. I was swallowed by the room on the third floor. And in it, traced by his hands. Curves of my waist, the small of my back. Dad doesn’t know what I’m into these days. It was sick. And sad. A win for ‘boys will be boys’ and a shovel full of dirt into the void for me. But hey, At least I was beautiful. He wanted the virgin girl. And in a reality where you are no different than any other fatherless babysitter, you feel chosen. I was finally chosen. In a pitiful sort of way I told myself that I was lucky, that I should be thankful about what happened in that very dark room. 

The local drug dealer wanted to fuck me. And in my slowly beating heart I thought that meant something. That I meant something. And That was my true innocence. It had fuck all to do with the underwear being rolled down my thighs, rolled past my knees where the now brown scars, once pink, tell stories of when childhood was about racing and summer school and dirt and popsicles. Perhaps it was for a while but no. Not anymore. The darkness came for me when I was an older kind of young. Naive, perky. Wet. And To top it all off I knew the truth of my father way too soon, and he still never calls, but loves the color green. So yes, in this life and maybe in another, I am a girl halfway through summer with a begging rage behind her breasts, a flower between her legs, and panties at her ankles without a roar in the matter. And In another life it will happen again, the darkness will come for the girls. It always does and it will be a hot and holy summer sunday. They will say nothing, do nothing, feel nothing, and think, why is becoming a woman so terrible?

--kniyuhmone