My Last Innocent Year

by Daisy Alpert Florin

The confusing part was, this wasn’t what I thought rape looked like, the thing I’d been taught to steel myself against ever since I was young.

I didn’t know what to call what he had done to me. I only knew how it had made me feel.

I realized that no matter what he had done to me, I would always be the one unpacking that night, wondering what I might have said or done differently.