Page 79 of Lennox Lane

And that matters.

Because I’ve been loved badly before.

Not always by lovers.

Sometimes by blood.

Sometimes by people

who were supposed to know

that a girl isn’t a burden

just because she needs feeding.

I’ve been left

in rooms where I should’ve been protected.

I’ve been blamed

for hands that reached for me.

I’ve been told

my survival made me shameful

by people who should’ve been ashamed

to let me survive alone.

So when a man looks at me

like I’m not a cautionary tale,

like I’m not a secret,

like I’m not the sum total

of every night

I had to save myself,

it does something to me.

When he sees the ice

and doesn’t call me cold,

when he sees the sword

and doesn’t ask me to drop it

before proving his hands are safe,

when he sees the lavender

growing through concrete