Left of Right
The Story of A Missing Compass

We were lying in bed and it was three or four or five a.m. You were telling me about all the things that broke you. You didn’t tell me who raped you, just that it made you feel like less of a man.
You talked a little about all the horrible things you did in college. I caught you smiling a few times it made me wonder. Did breaking up with a girl, while you were inside of her get you off?
“He died when you were sixteen,” you said as you tapped your forehead, “he’s still in here though.” I tried to catch your hands when they clawed at your face attempting to drag out the voice inhabiting your mind.
Later I drifted in and out of sleep safe in the arms of an accused rapist. That girl was a liar, at least that’s what you told me. You even cried when you talked about how she wrecked your world which meant it had to be the truth.
You spoke for hours, until you had no voice left. You talked and talked and told me all I should have needed to hear. But when you were done I still didn’t know you.
I never did find out who abused you. Or if you liked it when you hurt me. I’ll never know why that voice lives in your head, or if you really forced yourself on that seventeen year old.
I stood by you for as long as I could, defending you, loving you, protecting you. Even now I’m not sure if what I did in the end was walking away or escaping, if you were the dodged bullet or the gun itself. I’m still not sure if you were just a little bit twisted or if your moral compass simply wasn’t something that ever existed. Either way, you always were a little too far left of right.
