Someone else's.

My breasts were not  my own.

I wore a silk bra so that you hands would not find padding.

I looked at them in the mirror, and wondered if they were big enough to impress you.

If they were perky enough to matter.

If the darkness around the nipples was important, or not.

I stared at them in the mirror and checked them in the shower and waited.

I remember the first time someone touched them and I knew they did not belong to me.

With rough hands, pressing and poking, and there was merely pain.

A wet tear ran down my face and I cried inside and hoped that the teacher would notice and tell you that this behavior was not appropriate, or just tell you that you were hurting me, but he didn't see, and there was no stopping you.  I knew then that they weren't really my breasts.

I wondered about the hard places and the movement beneath the surface.

I remember when they came out for the first time and I hit them on the pool wall and I thought they were swollen from the beating, but the swelling didn't go down.

They could not be my breasts:

I was ashamed of them because they were small and then ashamed because of the padding and then ashamed because I had none and then ashamed because I just wanted to sit with you at the drive-in but you didn't want to sit with me - just my breasts - so I let you, because they were not mine.

You laughed because you hurt me.

You told your friends you "felt me up".

But it wasn't really me.  Just my breasts.  Not me.

I am still just a little girl.  I do not know what I am doing.

Today I sat in the bath tub and stared at them in abstract perspective through the drain pipe plug and realized that they were much smaller now, and saggy from bearing children and several doctors have poked and prodded and I have wondered about their sensitivity and I have shuddered at remembering the social studies classroom and the darkness of the movies and the towels over the basement windows so the neighbors wouldn't see us and I have used them and you have used them and they have been around and in and out of everything and they have spilled feminine milk over over-sized t-shirts and they have filled me with awe and they have been in the way and sitting in the bathtub I suddenly understood that they no longer belong to you.  They sit on my skin.
On my body.
A part of who I have become.
And I choose; and you can not control me.