The nightmares are back, it's been awhile. I thought things would be better once I moved away and you stopped your merciless eye stalking and people please flattery. I knew you haunted the past I once lived, but I never thought you would return a ghost. Making me relive every horrible moment that you hurt me. I cried that night, the night you bruised, battered, and broke me.

Do you remember me crying? I couldn't make it to my class the next morning, I couldnt climb all those stairs. It hurt to breathe. You didn't see it, purple, black bruises mapping my skin like a blueprint, roadmap. I wore long sleeves to mask the ones that tattooed my skin in your fingers pinning me to the ground, or the ones under my ribs where you held me down and stole my breath away, and jeans to cover the ones on my thighs where you thrust them open with your knees, or the ones on my hips where you threw me to the ground, or the red lines where your nails left rivers of blood and forever scars where you tried taking off my clothes. You said i deserved it, and that i liked it, but my body betrayed me in its most carnal state. I threatened to scream, but my chest was too labored from holding your weight and you threw my bluff. You tore something inside me, as you fished around for arousal. I couldn't walk straight for days. You didn't mind or notice, you just ate with friends and tore me down to fit their bad boy -mean girl lifestyle.

Now i find myself waking in the night, smelling the sweat you plastered to my clothes, and your hands grasping me and touching places you never should have been. I said stop remember? Remember? I wake in the night gasping for air the same way my lungs looked for air that day when you strangled every scream out of me. I was tired for days, you told me enough that it was my fault and i believe you now. I'm not strong enough to fight you in my dreams just like i wasn't strong enough to fight you then. The bruises are gone now, the scars aren't and I am too afraid to tell anyone that for the longest time I thought 'love' was supposed to hurt, that 'love' was something tough guys used as a weapon, that all males used as a weapon. I don't sleep much anymore, cuz i still feel what happened that night. You say you aren't the same person and that i should stop by sometime.....but you still haven't apologized and a small part of you still feels it was justified. I hurt everywhere now, and i was stupid to think you couldn't stay in the past for long, that's not how you work.