I was attending a movement workshop in Argentina.
I felt terrified the first day there.
Terrified of anyone touching my body.
Anywhere on my body.

We would sometimes look at each other and not say anything.
We knew what we did, but we didn’t talk about it.
It’s funny how the whole thing passed smoothly just because we didn’t talk about it.
But if the same thing had happened with other people and they talked about it,
It could have made a huge difference in their relationship.

When you would try to touch me,
I felt like you couldn’t see me.
You could only see the body you were about to touch.

My mother sat me down and told me she wanted to talk to me about something. 
She talked about some embarrassing, incomprehensible things. 
I was having lunch, so I wasn’t really listening to her. 
"Don’t let anyone touch you.”

You mean to tell me if a woman has acid thrown on her in the street and her face is disfigured, then so long as her organs are still functioning, the charge will still be ‘physical assault of a woman?’”

I used to always watch her from the examination room window in the government hospital that I worked at.
Her name was Sokkara. She was young. She couldn’t be older than 13 years old.

I was the last one to get her period at school.
I was 15 years old.
It was just me and one other girl left.
Everyone thought getting their period was a big deal, but not me.

I ran away from you the first time you tried to kiss me.
“You’re a coward!” you said.
I was scared.
Scared of myself.
There was a voice in my head telling me,
“Are you sure you want to get so close to him?”
I was hurt by everyone I got close to.