That Thing That Happened

I called it That Thing.
That Thing  that happened.

Because my mouth was a locked room,
and naming it was a door
I wasn’t ready to open.

The Terrible Thing.

I stacked other words around it,
like sandbags against a rising river—
hurt, secrets, things he made me do.

I was a child.
I thought keeping quiet meant it was my fault.
I thought not screaming  meant I let it happen.
I thought surviving meant I had chosen.
I was a child.

It took me years—I was seventeen, I think—
before I could say it.
I wrote the words on a scrap of paper,
each letter a tremor finding its shape,
until it stood there, stark and unblinking:

He raped me.

The ceiling did not fall.
The lights did not flicker.
The truth stood up
when I called it what it was.

I'm all grown up now,
and that word is part of my story.
But it's not my name.
I carry it with me, yes—
but I walk on.

That Thing  was not my fault.
I can say it out loud now,
and in saying it,
I keep what he couldn't take.