I dressed myself
with the maps of
all the places I
had travelled to.

But you were scared
of the open road
and you didn’t like
how the sweat weighed
down my hair and how
my legs were slightly
calloused because of
all the rocks I scrambled
over and the rosy bruises
that colored my cheeks
from that time I fell
flat on my face.

So you gunned cold
water at my head and
beat my back until it was
straight and doused my skin
with bleach to burn the
journals off my body and
you gagged me when I
cried in protest because
father knows best.

I was strung up by your
shame and when they
asked me why my skin
was almost transparent
and why I stood up so
painfully erect; you
robbed me of my voice
and told them it was
the winter and hard-
backed chairs.

You swept me under
the rug with all the other
broken things and I lay
like brittle driftwood
eroded by your disgust
next to all the leftover
pieces you could have
reassembled but never
did and I remembered
why I had always been
afraid of you.