*Explicit mature content ahead*

Come with me, I said, and no one knew

Where or how my pain throbbed,

No carnations or barceroles for me.

Come with me, as if I were dying

And no one saw.

No one saw...

.....

It was dark.

He had switched on her lampshade when he walked into her room but she refused to look at the shadows on the wall. She could hear the crinkle of the condom wrapper as he crumpled it into the pocket of his pants before he leaned over her- delusional in his beliefs that she wasn't just his sister. That she was his lover and his partner and he tried to treat her as one. She turned her face as soon as she felt him hovering above her.

She wouldn't let his lips touch one more part of her that night. He had defiled every part of her already- there was nothing left for him to dirty and taint. He had blackened all of her with his lips and his hands and his body. He had sullied her lips, her breasts, her arms, her legs. There was not one part of her that he hadn't touched, kissed or bit. She was dirty with his scent and she knew that no matter how much she would scrub, it would never leave her.

He stood up, irked at her refusal, before he ran his hand through her hair one last time.

She refused to look at him, instead fixing her gaze at the bare tree across her window that once shaded her sunflowers. She would rather look at that- that bleak reminder of what her life had become. She had lost the sun that once gave her so much of hope. It had gone. It had faded into nothing as if it had never existed and she was too tired to run after it again.

She heard the door click softly into place barely comprehending who or what she was anymore. She felt as if she had walked out of her own body. She wasn't there. She was outside somewhere. She was far away in a beautiful place that held no darkness and no night. She wasn't Tasneem. She was someone else looking in through the window but she wasn't her.

It wasn't her who was a whore.

She wasn't her brother's whore.

It wasn't her.

She stood up, wincing as she lowered her t-shirt to cover at least the tops of her thighs. The bruises on her inner thighs had barely begun to fade before he stepped foot into her room once again. He would never take her once- it was always multiple times. He would touch her and stroke her and kiss her pretending she was taking pleasure from his actions but she felt as if she was a stone doll. Her limbs were there for him to move as he pleased. If he wished to stretch her arms above her head or if he wished to raise her knee, he would do so. She had lost the will and the ability to fight back. She had stopped saying No because No had no meaning anymore.

She did as he wanted to yet she was never there when it happened. Her body was present but her mind had wondered away. It had fluttered hundreds of kilometres away to a place he could never follow. Her mind knew what to do as soon as his fingers traced the edge of her shirt- it knew that it was time to flee and never know what it was that he was doing to her. She never knew when his mouth descended upon her throat or when his hands squeezed her breasts or when he began to unzip his pants. She never felt him even when he was breaking her from the inside out. She never knew when it was that he would finish or when it was that he would once again lay on top of her so that he could have her once again.

There was a time when she had begged him to stop. When she had cried out in pain as he invaded her body or pleaded with him to leave her alone. She had even tried asking for help from her mother but her mother never helped her. Her mother only took him aside and asked him it was true. She could see the way his face darkened and she cowered at the stiff glances he kept on giving her.

She wanted to die. She wanted to pick up a knife and slit the veins running through her wrists and the insides of her thighs. She wanted to take each and every one of her mother's tablets and fall off to sleep for an eternity. She wanted to walk into a pool and never come back up.

She wanted to die. She wanted to die physically. She was already dead inside- it was just her body that was alive but she wanted it to die. To cease to exist.

To never be.

He was so angry with her. He was so angry and it frightened her.

She waited for him, shivering under her covers at what was to come. She knew he would come. He barely concealed his steps as he walked into her room and lifted the covers off of her. She didn't want to look at him. She wanted to keep her eyes closed but he forced her to look at him. He forced her to lift up her head and look at him as he opened the buttons of her pyjama top before ripping off the hooks of her bra. He wanted her to look at him as he lowered her pants and he wanted her to look at him as he tortured her in the vilest of ways. He never allowed her to wander away- not even for a second as his fingernails kept digging into her jaw. He wanted her to be there with him as he split her apart and shattered her into dust to be blown away into the wind.

He didn't ignore her screams and her pleading. That night, he revelled in it. He thrived on it and he took pleasure from it. He wanted her to beg him to stop knowing that he wouldn't. Not until he was so exhausted that he could barely move. And when he could move- he would take her again and again and again and each time he took her, he would be rough with her. He wanted her to feel the pain she had caused him and he wanted her to remember it.

And she remembered it.

She remembered bleeding for two days because of him. She was scared to go to the bathroom knowing that she would only be wiping away just a little more blood.

She had never again tried talking to her mother about it.

Ever.

He would kill her soon.

It would happen. She would die. He had told her once that he would kill and she knew that he wouldn't kill her until her had broken her.

And he had finally broken her.

She walked towards her bathroom, her face spasming as her raw thighs rubbed against each other with each step. She had wiped away her shame and her humiliation before she stood up from the toilet and washed her hands.

She didn't look in the mirror anymore. She never recognised the person staring back at her so she didn't want to look. And she didn't want to see the evidence of his actions. The was only one time that she ever dared to look at her naked body in front of her mirror and she had never looked again. She could still remember the red marks strewn all over her and she could still feel his teeth as they grazed her smooth skin as if trying to find the best spot before he clamped down hard on her browned skin- claiming her as his.

She switched off the lights before she stepped into her shower, slowly pulling her t-shirt off her body. She hadn't waited for the water to feel warm. She didn't need to anymore. She always felt cold so it would never matter. She could stand under scorching water and still, she would feel the cold sinking into her bones.

And as the droplets of cold water cascaded over her bruised, dirty, impure body she allowed herself to cry. She allowed her mind to come back home as she sat down on the cold tiles and cried over what her life had become.

...

No one saw the moon that bled in my mouth

Or the blood that rose in the silence.

Come with me, as if I were dying,

And no one saw.

No one saw...

He thought he would never come back.

He was sure he would never be reminded of this place again even though he had told Tasneem he would meet her again. He was never truly sure but he had to come back.

He had to come and see her. He had to know that she was okay. She was always so strong that he had never thought she would try to end her own life. How could she have thought it was okay to swallow a pack of cigarettes? How could she have done it?

He never thought he would be back in the same hospital. He had walked down the familiar corridors, his nose burning with the scent of the anti-septic cleaner that only faintly covered up the pungent smell of urine coming from one of the wards. He walked up, unable to recall being rolled down the same corridor as doctors and nurses hovered above him. He would never know who had followed his lifeless body as he was wheeled into the theatre or who had waited in the waiting room thereafter.

He shook his head, ridding himself of his thoughts.

He was scared to walk into her room and see what had become of her. He knew he shouldn't have left her but he did. He walked in slowly, trying to look at anything else besides the lump under the white, printed hospital duvet. The steady beeps of the monitors beside her comforted him- she was still okay. She was still alive and her body was still fighting with her. That was all he needed to know.

She was okay.

She was alive.

He sat down in the rickety chair besides her bed, afraid to even take her hand in his. It seemed so small compared to his that he worried he might break it. But he needed to touch her, just to know that she was really okay. He needed to feel the warmth of her skin and the twitch of her fingers against his just to make sure.

"What did you do to yourself girl?" He whispered, afraid that she might wake up as he ran his thumb lightly over her knuckles. "I'm sorry I left you."

She didn't reply. Her eyelids barely even fluttered at his presence. She was still fast asleep, trapped in the recesses of her mind where nothing bad ever happened. That comforted him, if only just a little, knowing that just for a while she wouldn't think about it. She would be lost in her dreams that he hoped was better than her waking hours.

He only ever wanted her to be happy and it killed him knowing that things had never really went according to plan.

He rubbed his hand tiredly over his face. The bus ride had taken him longer than he had expected and he hadn't been able to sleep much over the past few weeks. He could feel the sluggishness of his own body and the slight burn under the rim of his eyes as the sun glared down on his face through the opposite window. But he didn't want to sleep just yet.

He wanted to watch her. She had changed so much since the last time he had seen her. She was all grown up now and he had missed it. She was beautiful too- she was always beautiful but now....

Now she was ethereal.

And he had missed it.

"What did you do Farhana?" He asked her one last time before he rested his head near her hand and fell off to sleep beside her...

A/N Poem adapted from Come With Me, I Said, And No One Knew by Pablo Neruda