Before We Were Yours

by Lisa Wingate

Every available avenue is paved with guilt, lined with pain, and pockmarked with shame.

These people can control everything about me, but they can’t control where I go in my mind.

I want a pain I understand instead of the one I don’t. I want a pain that has a beginning and an end, not one that goes on forever and cuts all the way to the bone.

I shush my mind, because your mind can ruin you if you let it.

They just assumed that money, power, and social position gave them the right.

It’s funny how what you’re used to seems like it’s right even if it’s bad.