If I Can't Have You

My fingers came up and gently trailed along the black marker marring my skin. My eyes lowered. It wasn’t the large, black, boldly displayed letters that spelled out the word WHORE across my chest that had me truly crippled with fear in that moment, but the letters printed beneath them, below my belly, across my lower abdomen… large, menacing... a word with more far reaching implications than the simple derogatory insult someone who would drug and rape a woman might throw at them. No, this was far more unsettling, far more frightening. Drawn across my lower bellow, just above the neatly groomed curls nestled between my legs, written in black maker, in capital letters, was the word MINE.