Numbered

I am not the nightlight, nor am I the monster under my bed that my father would tell me to fear. I never feared the unknown, just reality. Daunting, inexplicable reality. Reality was the shadow on my walls, the hand around my wrist and the conversations near the backdoor. My nightmares flooded with the wrinkles on his hand and the ticking of his pacemaker, every beat collided with mine and his continued, mine slowed. I felt in deep in my chest, my lungs collapsing and refusing to continue, for what is left to see? The horrors life had provided me, his hand on my thigh hidden under a Disney duvet that still had the price tag on and I felt comfort in that. I too still had my price tag on, worn like a shaming sign from history my tag just said eight. Whilst it's not visible to everyone else I still wear it daily, it's impossible to take off. It wears me, proudly. I tried to scratch the words out and replace it with eighteen but there's no hiding from the purity number, you are a slave to the number indefinitely. Nobody counted the freckles on my back and traced them like constellations, nobody told me they loved me with beads of sweat dripping from their foreheads. I can’t see their numbers, but they don’t carry the shame of eight.