Green Light

by Jescie Hall

Shane’s out there, covered in the same blood of retribution, gazing right back at me. For the first time in my life, I’m not simply being looked at. I’m not being watched for simple pleasures or toyed with for disturbing satisfactions. I’m not being used to fill the void of some fratboy’s reduced expectations of women, presented like fine china for a father who never cared, or even expected to save my adult mother who can’t keep her addictions at bay. I’m not sacrificing pieces of myself for the sake of simple-minded sanity or dulling down the complexity of who I am to appease others. With my every flaw and imperfection, there is a man who embraces my darkness, fosters it as his own, and craves the madness of my twisted mind as chaotically as I do his. A man who walks that same line of depravity as me, flirting with the edge of corruption, our moral compass adjusting toward the justice we see fit. For the first time, I know that the depth of me is reachable by the only one who dug into my dirt and made it his own. I’m entirely exposed, and finally seen by the only one who’s ever mattered.