He came to you
When I was 15,
Your loving husband,
To ask if he could take me to his bed;
And you,
Wounded deeply by your father's nightly visits
To your childhood bed,
Said "Yes." - as you had been trained to -
Unable to see the wrongness
In the question or the act,
When you knew how much you both loved me.

He came to me
When I was 15,
To ask me into his arms;
He said he'd asked you
And you'd said yes,
And so it was okay.
And I,
Who had been plaything
To father, friend, and stranger,
Acquiesced -
For I knew no other answer,
Not that I could safely give.

For once that question had been asked,
All bets were off.
Al rules suspended -
We had passed into Wonderland
And all I thought I knew
Turned topsy-turvy.

I could not say "No." -
That simple answer was a part of normal life,
It wouldn't work in Wonderland.
I had tried it once,
Overcome my father's training at 14,
Denying to a stranger in his 40s
The rights so freely exercised by family and friends
Upon my body.
I could not walk that path again,
I could not bear to lose
The illusion that I had a choice,
To see within the eyes of what was once a dear and trusted friend
The cold heat of ruthless lust
That made of me a nothingness without relevance or meaning to the act,
Driving me to flee myself
And leave behind an empty husk
To cower at his feet,
Or to be beaten, kicked, and tied into submission.

So instead I flitted at the edges of myself,
Aware enough to know that at least it seemed he did not try to hurt me,
As he laid me down within an open field
Upon a cloak.
Night's cloak, in turn, was not enough to hinder
The tripping feet of a stranger in the darkness
From finding us out;
An awkward, brief discovery,
That made my shame complete
As it confirmed that in this Wonderland affair
The rules of daily life were set aside,
And he was in the right.

As much as it could be -
(Coming as it did with a complete disregard
For all the rules meant for my protection,
And setting aside the horror
Of what it meant for me
To watch a very real friendship skew, and alter into something twisted,
As I watched him work his will upon a body
In which I knew I had no rights,
Although it was my own) -
His touch was kind, and gentle;
And I counted myself lucky
That the only pain
Was that which I had always known, because I was too young,
Too small, too clenched with frozen fear and horror
Beneath the mask that I had learned to wear,
And, forced by those who taught me
That to let my face or voice or actions show
My real feelings, at my usage at their hands
Was tantamount to criminal offense,
And punishable by further pain,
I did as the script, long-learnt, had said I ought -
And watched the cold, pure beauty of the stars.