There’s No Water, But I’m Drowning

Content note: This piece speaks to sexual violence and survival. Please read only what feels safe for you.

There’s no water, but I’m drowning.

Lungs ignite, the room is closing.

Hands tighten around my throat—

This is it. This is the note

I never wrote, never left,

Just fingerprints and shallow breaths.

I count the bruises on my skin,

Dot to dot—they lead to him.

Please no. Please don’t go.

He loves me so.

He loves me so.

He loves me till it breaks my bones,

Calls control a careful home.

Kills the light, bends what I see,

Blinds the truth, rewrites me.

Don’t say a word. Don’t make a sound.

Be smaller. Still. Don’t wake the hound.

I stand before hell’s iron gate,

Beg forgiveness I don’t rate.

Please don’t let me enter in.

Don’t let this be how my story ends.

Is it over yet? I beg, I plea.

Please don’t make me watch this be.

Black and blue and colorless gray,

My mind unhooks—I drift away.

Eyes roll back, my body stays,

But I’m elsewhere, lost in space.

This fantasy is how I hide,

A stitched-up place I crawl inside.

Wrapped in numbness, starved of touch,

Aggression dressed as loving much.

Hands again around my throat,

No water here, but still I choke.

Shaking cold, I fight the spill—

He leans in close, intent to kill.

Everything is rearranged,

A before-and-after carved in pain.

These memories won’t let me be,

They sit beside me, keep me company.

Never alone with what was done—

But I am breathing.

I am not done.

*

Writing this is not confession.

It is not forgiveness.

It is not shame.

It is naming what happened

so it no longer owns me in silence.

If this stirred something in you: you are not broken, you are not alone, and none of this was your fault. Take care of yourself in whatever way you need right now.