The Festering

Betrayal had never been my Mistress. Though perhaps before she had been gentle raps upon my door. Often we exchanged friendly smiles, but never before were first-name introductions or conventional greetings shared…

Until Him. He gave her to me. He knew the time and the place, and He shipped me off to misery; He made filthy my soul, in the festering shame of places touched, in the childish girl who left sobbing shoulders for hidden why-me smiles; and with those smiles she wondered why her lips were of cement.
The festering came twice thereafter, and still vocals stayed locked in rot and love.

He did this... That man who collected so easily my trust…
which then I suppose I am not blameless for; I had left the festering to boil silently… and still I loved him never less.
That is, until the moment pain interjected, still stinging from the loss of my fragmented innocence, though never whole before this.

For a while, I wanted blacktop streets to meet with him a reckless driver, their music blaring whilst fingers whispered beats to a jerky, 1980s steering wheel—all this from me… the girl who could not bring herself to squish a spider without thoughts of a maybe-somewhere family—but oh how I wished Him misfortune; I wished Him as large a bath to bathe in it. I loved of Him a crueler mistress than Betrayal… but what Master possessed the suffering not yet felt?
For He was no stranger to agony; they’d been lovers all His life. Did Him and cruelty need reunite in His lonely, furrowed age?

Now I’ll tell you, so listen well—the man I once thought father, the man who first did let me love me—to the words boiling from the breath of my violated breast:

<sub>I forgive you.

…</sub>

_{I forgive you.}



and now I am free of you.