She may not be little anymore but she is still young enough to buy a ticket. She curls her hair, wears a cute dress. And walks herself to an Adoption House in search of someone to take her home.

She’s lost count of how many times she’s been adopted by such generous strangers.

In the Adoption House, this one was up against her in the dark. She can barely see him in the red light and pounding music. He had handfuls of her tight in his grasp and was clearly counting for more. In his deepest toughest voice, he demands she call him Daddy.

This is habit for her, this is practice and instinct.
She nibbled his ear and whispered that real Daddies must take their little girls home.

When she was a little girl, she had no choice of course. The first un-little thing she did as a little girl was to make an emergency escape plan every time she was taken. They think they had her but she stayed behind, and glowed behind her eyes tightly shut. Her escape plan took her to the bestest places. Places these men couldn’t have ever known, yet they helped her make it, make it, make it better every time. Every grunt, every drop of sweat, every slap of skin on skin was a piece of her new world, fashioned from filth, falling right in place. It was beautiful.

Only it was always sore to come out of. To open her eyes and crash back to earth. Tired thighs and tiny trinkets. Growing up meant less of that, and more adjustments to the normal, finding prescribed sanity. But all the while, her only thought was to go back. To go back. Because when she was a little girl, she put her sanity into the places her childhood was stolen to make. It was large, wild and gorgeous territory. And nothing had come close since. Now there was a big gap of normal in between her and there.

Thankfully there was no shortage of generous strangers to help bridge the gap.

Daddy is saying she’s got her Mommy’s mouth. She knows better, of course. But it was easier to pretend she didn’t. Easier to ask coy questions until everything is laid bare. That is the first step. Then he will be hard at work making a mess to bury his ugly chaos of sadness and phobias. She on the other hand, will have a perfect smile on her lips.

She is catching her flight back.