The Only One Left
A Prose Poem by Naomi Ward
“Don’t hurt Naomi because someone else hurt Naomi.” Advice given to me by a friend.
It is a beautiful thing to say. Maybe even a true thing. But truth does not always make obedience easy.
Because I hurt me because I could not hurt the men who hurt me when I was a child. I could not fight them then. I cannot fight them now. They are dead, and death has made them unreachable, untouchable, beyond the reach of every word I never said and every act of rage I never got to commit.
The anger has nowhere to go.
The fear has nowhere to go.
The child who still wants someone to pay has nowhere to send her bill.
So she sends it to me.
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And that is the terrible arithmetic of trauma: when the people who caused the wound are gone, the person who remains becomes the easiest target.
Me.
There is only one person left to hurt. And I am tired of being the place where other people’s violence comes to finish itself.
So maybe my friend’s words are not advice after all.
Maybe they are an instruction.
Don’t hurt Naomi because someone else hurt Naomi.
I like the sound of that.
So I will have to be the one who refuses to pay the bill.
© 2026
