She smiled with syrup on her lips a sweetness thick enough to drown me. Her hands were soft, but war doesn’t need claws to leave a man in pieces. My body stood like a soldier saluting the wrong flag, while my mind screamed in a language no one taught me how to speak. I wanted to run. But how do you flee when the battlefield is your own skin? She whispered, "Don’t fight it. I know you want this." I laughed because that’s what we’re taught to do when we’re choking on shame but there’s no one in the room to save us. And when I flinched, she called it teasing. When I froze, she called it thrill. When I cried in the bathroom after, I called it nothing. Because what do men call pain when the world only lends us silence? They see the rise, the breathless sigh, and say, "He must’ve liked it." As if pleasure can’t be prison. As if consent is sewn into skin that stiffens from fear. Let me tell you what it is: It’s a nightmare with perfume. It’s a jail with no bruises. It’s betrayal wrapped in seduction, and a voice in your head that whispers: “Maybe I asked for it.” But I didn’t. I didn’t want her. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be a story no one would believe because I don’t bleed the right kind of red. So I sit, a man in the dark, haunted by a touch they told me I should’ve loved.