Indigo

Television crackles. Static fills the muted space.

I can’t tear my gaze from those turquoise eyes.

Innocent eyes.

Eyes like mine.

Soft blonde ringlet curls, toothless grin — a joyous smile.

A family’s anguished pleas for the missing.

No.

Taken.

-

Time stands still, vision tunnelling, narrowing.

I’ve forgotten how to breathe.

-

It always comes when I least expect it.

The roar of an engine.

The wrong shade of blue.

The heavy scent of cologne… his cologne.

-

My heart constricts.

Its chaotic rhythm hits my body like a freight train.

Bile gurgles in my throat. I retch.

-

16 and a half years.

197 months.

6,023 days.

-

I was lucky.

Lucky, they say.

I escaped.

But they don’t see the scars.

The way fear has held me in its grasp all this time,

leaching poison into the marrow of my brittle bones.

-

I know what they do.

Monsters who wear the faces of men.

I know what they do to girls like me.

-

Was I lucky to escape their depravity?

Yes.

But that doesn’t erase where their intentions were seared upon my skin.

That doesn’t stop the nightmares of what could have been

from chipping away at my sanity.

There are days when I question

if I ever really made it out at all.

-

[Breaking news!]

-

A television whirls in the distance.

Awareness edges back from the abyss.

Anguished pleas now sobs of relief.

Found.

No.

Escaped… but never free.

-

A single tear falls down my cheek.

And I wonder if she will hate

the colour indigo,

Commodores and caravan parks,

term breaks and spring days.