I haven’t the clearest idea of who I am.   I have lived and died, and gone through so many iterations of myself,  half-told by those around that I see myself a thing of a hundred different stories. A  village shunned man kept away and skinned down to be used.  Mocked and seen horrific, I was filled with a parade of insults so to keep me away.  Caged boy they say, man- eaten they chatter and object made they scream, as they run away childlike red. Leaving me out in sun to rot until a man wearing the name of father took me into his mouth,  stealing me away from a burnt-out existence.   For them, I was worth 70 pounds of rice,  but in the hands of father I was threads to be tied into a lucky charm.  Swallowed down and licked till skin went blue with fatigue. 

From what I have found out from the whisperings around me, is that the story goes like this. My family home was set ablaze by wanting men believing that under our home there lay something for them to pray to . And thus to them, we were miscreants eating away at their chance at survival. . Therefore a conflagration was set and I was the sole survivor.  A babe that grew out of a burnt carcass two extra years I didn’t have when I went in the fire.  And so father who'd came to lay judgment in response to this act, found me to be something worth saving. A key to another sort of existence. So he pocketed me and took me to his grand house a secret only to be shared with a few trusted advisors. With anyone who saw me at the remains of my house quickly killed off. 

I was his and brought to great attention and care. Leaving his wife jealous of all the time he spent with me, and I loved him and he loved me, and every age I grew after a death I took off to offer him.  Learning that depending on what was made out of me I could give and regresses in ages.  I remember in an odd circumstance I jumped a good number of years and we spent days together away from the family home.  He taught me of the world, from the outdoors to the bed, and I loved him more than anything but he would not live forever. 

His son then took ownership of me,  and he was good at first but then he became polluted by his mother’s jealousy, and his ways with me changed.  I started to become tasked with different things. From stealing to murders to dissections and killings. I had less become a person to treat with care but more an object to fulfill their greed. Now there is nothing to me.    My hands do not seem my own, neither do I carry a distinct smell. A reminder that a  bought thing quickly loses its sheen and becomes a substance of wealth and glory for its owner. Dulled down to points into which everything of I amounts to the whos and whats of mortal fleshed gods.  Bending me till my bones weep and my skin runs off to wear the prescribed guises and occupations.

But in this lifetime I am caged.  A boy lusted after by the successor of the family kissed and held till my skin blisters.  Finally taught how to read, at the cost of being devoured. In this existence, I am a mere 19 to his 44. Just on the cusp of another year but my bones ache and my hands feel chapped, symptoms of a lackluster siege, Yet he just keeps digging and wanting. His hot breath a constant reminder of my ownership sticks to me like a curse. Waking unwanted hands and a dirty mouth across me as though I were a slab of meat and not a person that could form thoughts or ideas. 

“ This time you’ve come back all so perfectly. This time I’ll have you without any interference.“  he is drunk and wide in his ways. The words are putrid, a self-expressed godhood void of any real punch. And so he goes to leave himself all over me. As though trying to say that he’d become my savior and this was what was needed in compensation. And so he is pinching my hips in between his fingertips. Rolls his knees between my legs to hold them apart.  His tongue licking my eyes shut and prying my mouth open. Into which he throws a sour taste of days old residue.

  I am on the ground as he straddles me, body heavy and hands wired to me as though seizing my nerves as to gut out all resolve. His mouth deepens on mine weighing down breath as he unzippers his pants and goes in. Fast and manic, he binds me to himself but it’s a quick succession of acts that leaves him spent and enjoyed but myself bare and still tender. I am used to the pain of it, the force that goes in has been so for long I understand it. But for me, there is nothing of it, where he moans and pants I’m left unsatisfied. 

“you’re like a  cat,  a soft little thing I could just eat to the bones. “  He bites down on my neck, rubbing himself over me, again and again. As though the friction would start a fire and lay me out quivering in need of him. I dare not show anything off myself because I know that he'd take it as his right to go on and let me fill the empty spaces his wife left bleeding as she left. I wonder if he'd promised her a happily ever after only to smell me in the deepest corners of his nature. Semen suckled out and growing something new and without her. I wonder if she stayed away because she would rather kill him, and payment of that would be something that she would not be able to carry. He cups my buttocks and squeezes, finger shoved, he squealing as I emit a moan, rigged in pain as he jabs his way inside of me. I want to push off me , but I know I do not amount to anything in the face of my owner. And so when he takes his mouth to drink me down, I close my eyes and imagine times ago, and hopes of now.