Before Me

Sometimes I talk to ghosts
I've never met.

No one wakes up one morning
and becomes that man.
So there must have been others.
Test runs.
A first time that taught him
how easy it was.

I think of them in passing,
like headlights on a dark road.
If I stay there too long
my stomach turns.
My hands shake.

What if one of them had spoken up?

People call me brave,
tell the story as if I'm the hero,
as if courage were the point.
As if I stood up
with a list in my hands,
counting all the future girls
I might save from him.

I didn't.

I spoke up because I was drowning,
and I finally grabbed the edge
of something solid.
Because my body was tired
of carrying his secret
like an iron shadow.

I wasn't thinking of justice.
I was thinking of air.
Of the next breath.
Of making it through the night.

If others were spared,
I'm grateful.
I hold that thought carefully,
like something fragile
that doesn't belong to me.

But the truth is simpler.
I didn't rise to save them.
I didn't rise for justice.
I was only trying
to save myself.