Hey, will you listen?

Can you listen until the end?

I'm hoping these words reach you well, and you find it in your heart to read what I'm about to write.

That day.

It keeps coming back to me, haunting me every night. You've told me to forget it, but it keeps coming back. He keeps coming back.

I can picture it like it happened yesterday, the horror in your eyes as you watched me cry on the floor. The ghost of my cries for your help. The weight of the guilty hands that were holding me down. The way you lunged like you wanted him dead.

What terrified me more was that I didn't understand who you wanted to kill.

If it's me, hiding behind you after you pulled me by the wrist, or your father on his knees, begging you not to tell your mum.

I can feel you sometimes, right where you left a bruise on my wrist, when you dragged me out and yelled at me to get the hell away from you and your family — it stops the fear. The shake of my limbs.

But sometimes, I remember him. The trail of a firm hand that takes me away where it's safe, not enough to stop the memory — and I feel so dirty I want to scratch every inch of the skin he's touched that I never wanted him to.

I wish I could scream it all out, cry it all out — the memory of that day, the lingering disgust, the fear. And like a miracle, this endless haunting would drain away. But I know I can't. I've tried so many times but it doesn't work that way.

I can't imagine what would've happened if you didn't come. If you just left the moment you saw. If you kept your mouth shut like he asked you to. If you kept being the good son you've always wanted to be.

But you didn't.

You destroyed everything to help me, including yourself.

Life is unfair. It's bitter, but I know despite the way you hold on to hate, you've always been sweet.

Sadly, you're not my flavour.