I wrote this text to go with the images. It’s rather depressing and has a *trigger warning: rape* associated with it. I might turn it into a monologue for a piece that I’m working on. I might not. Anyway, if you want to scroll past the text and get to the images, I won’t be offended.
** view the complete collection of uncensored photos at www.patreon.com/sargenti
I’m drawing lines on my body with light.
I drew a line with my body but it got broken so now I’m drawing lines on my body with light.
I am my body and my body is a line.
My body is violated.
My body is sacred.
My body is light.
And as I am here in silence and stillness with lines on my body a rage wells up inside of me that wants to scream
RAPIST!
Today I must be on the anger step of the stages of grief. I am finding out that these steps are not linear like the lines on my body. I can not step from one to the next to the next as I step from rungs on a ladder. No, these stages are a spiral, a deep unending spiral that just go deeper and deeper and darker and darker.
I wish you would have taken me to the hospital that day. I still want to go to the hospital, but it seems stupid now, now that I’ve remembered how to breathe.
In and out.
In and out.
Just like the motions of your body against mine.
In and out.
In and out.
And what’s funny is that I didn’t even remember it happening. There’s no way I could have and still survived out there in the desert… Not with everything else that you did to me.
But when you came back to me with tears in your eyes and that R word hot on your lips it all came crashing down.
In and out.
In and out.
Is it stupid that I still want you to care for me? Hold space for me as we process these emotions together? That you’ll keep your promise to love- honor- cherish? Why is there still part of me that is waiting for you to come back, that your final word to me won’t be rape?
It isn’t fair that you get to be out with new friends- friends who haven’t known the past eight years of me with you- friends who have never seen the hurt in my soul that you left when you crossed my line,
while I get to be here, unmoving, with lines of light on my body. Re-remembering how to breathe.
taken on iPhone 12 in New Orleans, LA.