#whoispoly

PROLOGUE

    I was a few months shy of my fourth birthday the morning they strapped me to that shockingly cold, steel table and stole my voice.

    Outside, the summer sun would warm my skin to the verge of sunburn just before a cool breeze would swing by like an oscillating fan to cool me off, relieving me, if only briefly, of my misery. But inside... inside this harshly lit, sterile room... I was naked. I was cold and vulnerable, and I craved the warm, soothing embrace of my mother who they forced to wait in the hallway against her will.

    I watched her face through the thick glass window. The thin black lines of the diamond-shaped pattern in focus- my mom just a blur in the background. I still feel the distance rising like a brick wall between us. Her expression was a new one. One a mother should never possess. One a child should never see on a mother's face. I was alone in that room and I was far too young to understand why she was not saving me. My tears mirrored in her own, I watched her, and she watched me; the both of us... helpless.

    "We are just going to take your picture," a harsh voice threatened. A figure lurking in the shadows of the sterile beige wall caught my attention.

    My body trembled, not from the cold, but from the idea that I had made him angry. I was sure this is why he tied my arms to the table with belts, but I didn't understand why this stranger would need a photo of me. Why did he want to immortalize the worst day of my life... or was it my own mother who wanted the memento?

    I did not leave there the same little girl that walked in. They broke me that afternoon and no one taught me how to put the pieces back together, properly. It would be six more years before I would allow anyone to ever take my picture again... and more than twenty before I reclaimed my voice.