dear mol.

TW: sexual assault

This is a poem about how someone I was very close to sexually assaulted a friend of mine and how I cut her out of my life completely. The individual she assaulted was her double in our school show Peter and the Starcatcher. They played my friend/love interest Molly Aster and I played Peter (Pan).

Please stop.

Stop sneaking into my dreams,

Lurking behind every door and plotline.

Stop showing up in my photo memories,

“One year ago today”.

Stop echoing in my thoughts,

My observations.

Stop injecting adrenaline and anxiety

Into my entire body at every crumb of correlation.

Now that you’re gone, I see

How clearly poisoned parts of our past were.

You played with my mind and my habits.

And I can never forgive you.

I hate you for what you did.

I hate anyone who does what you did 

And somehow you doing it made it worse.

My lungs seem deeper,

My mind doesn’t reel trying to steer the conversation away from things I don’t want to do

Or decipher your references or secret undertones,

My heart saved from the cycle of reliance and rescue.

But.

I miss you, too.

I don’t want to speak to you so I am writing this,

To tell you how much you linger.

I wondered if, after time,

It would all reveal itself to be superficial,

A tattoo that was constantly around,

Constantly visible,

But sat only on the top layer of skin, 

never seeing bone or blood.

Skin takes on attackers that the heart never knows,

But the heart struggles with the weight of the world.

And I didn’t expect you to have inked your way down there.

But you did.

We used to talk about sleepless nights and bad dreams,

The same kind that you choreograph for my audience of one now,

Reliving the past from every angle,

Every fear echoing louder in the chamber of our minds.

At first, you jumped out at me every night after my eyes shut,

Chasing after an explanation,

Forcing a conversation,

Manipulating the storyline and my responses,

Accusing me of tricking the world, you, myself,

That instead our relationship was a facade,

Something easily broken and forgotten.

Truth be told, very few things could have broken our friendship

And you decided to seek them out.

I would wake up with my heart in my throat,

Gagging on the idea of seeing you again,

Knowing I would choke on my words

And betray my intentions.

Just when I started to sleep through the night,

I would get a new bag of mangos,

A photo would pop up,

I would paint my nails,

We would order Thai,

My prescription would need a refill,

My sister would ask about you.

Hope* would ask about you.

Do you know how much it broke my heart to tell her,

Finally,

That we don’t talk anymore

And explain why without truly telling her?

I hate how much of me is related to memories of you.

I look back and see how you inserted yourself in everything.

Every activity,

Every photo,

Every moment.

It was nice to have a constant,

Even if you were the embodiment of the opposite.

In every photo, you are right next to me,

Now forcing a debate every time I want to show one.

Is it worth discarding the entire picture,

Which means so much to me,

To avoid your presence in it?

While you hurt me

And more importantly, you hurt her,

You healed and helped so much of me.

I know my mind better because of you

And I

Hate

How much we would say we had the same brain.

I hold onto memories of

Surprise birthday parties

Breathless auditions

Covid visits

Last days of school

Braids

Egg making

Rainbow friendship bracelets

Post-surgery mangos

Half birthday cries

Pad see ew

Staircase expositions

Beach trips

School videos

And so much more,

And it hurts so much

Because I love and treasure each one.

It is exclusively a family tradition

To gather at the Mexican place on the corner

On the last day of school.

You were there, in the middle of the table,

Laughing with my grandparents and

Breaking the mold.

I see the spores you released now.

Our friendship was expired, 

growing something dangerous and poisonous,

But I was blind.

Fifth period with Ms. Ryan in the air-conditioned, no-oranges room of our English class

Remains one of my favorite classes.

You.

Iris.

Darby.

And me.

We were unstoppable.

I have never felt such friendship,

Such connection,

Such laughter and joy and genius

Flow so instantly and constantly.

I keep some of those memories in my core,

Using them to hold myself up 

And keeping them from the poison of my mind.

They are that special.

Sophomore year, while I was killing myself

And unknowingly dying**,

I almost canceled on you.

You refused and so I went.

We had watery spaghetti and the balloons were silver.

Navy blue spirals hung from the ceiling.

My knees went out when I opened the door

And you all yelled ‘surprise’.

I was shaking and couldn’t breathe.

It was so special.

You were the last person to come and see me before covid hit

And the first person to come and see me after cancer and the vaccine.

Your sign from the parade was the one we used 

To mount my dad’s photo at my remission appointment.

I couldn’t sing during my audition because you had just done yours and I had run to you and we had danced and hugged because you felt good about it and I was so proud and then I didn’t take any time to breathe before walking in myself because we had signed up together so that we were one after another and once I got in there I realized I couldn’t breathe so I moved a chair and got my starting note but still, no oxygen.

But it worked out, I suppose,

For you were my Molly

And I was your Peter.

But it was also cursed,

Because she was Molly, too.

I saw your parents at the grocery.

I ducked and covered,

Snuck about

As if I was a soldier,

A spy.

I was under fire

From the memories of how much I loved them and they loved me

And from the potential conversations that would occur.

I was acutely attune to the possibility of betrayal:

Betraying my memories and their meaning for a cold break,

Betraying her privacy if they didn’t know,

Betraying my resolution and strength in steadfast avoidance of you.

I wonder how you are right now sometimes,

But mostly I wonder who I would be right now without you.

I think I survived the parts of you that clung and obstructed

Like the sticky slides and cigarette butts at a grungy, forgotten playground,

Which makes it harder to disregard the childlike playfulness and wonder and care

That coated many of our interactions.

I do not regret breaking our bond.

I regret that I didn’t do anything to stop you from what you did to her.

I know I couldn’t have known but still.

I do not regret the distance, space, avoidance.

I do regret the things we learned together, the memories with you,

because they hold too much power over me and because I’m glad they happened.

I did not expect this to be this hard.

You still show up in my dreams.

I know hate is such a gift of an emotion, so uncomplicated most times.

Pure anger and hurt, vengeful and gone.

Here, though, I can’t seem to get myself to hate you

Because I need to forget you.

Hating you gives you more power over me

And means that my dreams will forever hold a place for you.

But even in my hate, 

I cannot get you out of my head or my heart,

And that in turn makes me hate how you can even influence what that emotion is.

Please be done.

I am.

We are.

Leave me be.

*Hope is my sister

**I had cancer during junior year of high school