The Survivor's Guilt

Eyes the color of an iridescent ocean, never blue, but never green. Silky blonde hair blowing in the warm wind. Porcelain skin that almost reveals the storm of blue, purple, red veins just beneath the surface. 

Iridescent eyes exposing tiny red veins that could not keep his secrets. Silky hair that you spend hours taking care of, as it’s the only thing you can get right(control). Porcelain skin threatening to crack under its sleepless nights during his reign of terror.

I see(saw) you. I am(was) you. 

I was one sip of tainted coffee, one intentional car tampering, away from your ending. 

When I see your innocent face flash across my feed, I am that terrorized girl locked in the bathroom with the cold closet wall against her back as she hid behind her dresses, trying to soothe the pain of her right arm that now dons a cast due to the tendons he tore.

But I also am reminded of what could have been if I did not leave in the exact instant I left; that you were not lucky enough to have a God-given moment of valor to leave in the middle of the night. You are unable to lay next to your safe, protective, kind husband tonight and plan for your first child. 

While I live out the dreams I one-handedly wrote on the back of a receipt in a locked car, your dreams are gone. 

I was one sip of tainted coffee, one intentional car tampering, away from your ending.

You were one drive home while he spent the night in a Moab hotel, one professional trained to see signs of domestic abuse, away from my ending.

Why?

<3 M.