My body is a windowless cage. The vessel trapping me in the memories of how I have been maimed and wounded. I look at old videos of myself laughing with friends and wonder about this stranger who laughs so freely, before she felt the weight of rape and womanhood set on her shoulders. After all, what is being a woman, if not being a plaything for others to abuse?

My great-grandmother died before I was born. It never occurred to me as a child that she might be someone of note. But Mom knew she mattered, so a few years before I became a woman, and long before two small girls called me mother, she introduced her to me by telling a simple story.

Dear Younger Connie,

I’m sorry I tried to starve you.

I tried to starve you by going on diets. “Going on” sounds like there’s actually an itinerary and destination, but with diets, the finish line slides out of reach. I took you to weigh-ins. I made you write down every piece of food you ate. I made you go to bed hungry.

Dear child,

It was never your fault.

When your mom left, you were a forgotten consequence, but never the cause. She chose drugs because of her own weakness, not your self-described inadequacies. You were a toddler who lived every moment with a full heart and a pocket full of hope, but she was too far gone to bask in that light.

Dearest Little Girl,

I didn’t mean to forget you, to push you away for thirty years. I thought I knew you, but it turns out I created memories from photos and stories. I thought you were the happy, smiling child everyone said you were.

Dear Younger Self,

How could you have known? You came naked into a world that didn’t want you. Born on a kitchen table because your mother didn’t have the money for a hospital. Like everything else in your life, you’ve pretended this is cool when it’s actually pathetic. You have to admit it makes for an interesting story.

Train station toilets and hospital rooms, especially bed seven, smell the same. Like chlorine and baking soda and coercion and cold. I’m seventeen and I wear my school uniform. No - she wears her school uniform, three layers of khaki and stockings. He wears a suit and carries an umbrella.