Pretty Ghost (Consent) Somewhere along the way, I learnt I needed to be pretty to be seen. So, I brushed my hair straight like those girls on T.V., stole my mum’s mascara, and Chanel No. 5. I would suck in my belly and flutter my eyelashes as I laughed at their jokes. I would hoard compliments on my appearance and file them under ‘YOU ARE WORTHY’. And when the boy called me frigid when I said, “I just want to kiss,” after he kept trying to touch me there, I learnt that to be loved, I would need to lie to my body and keep his secrets. To be loved, I would need to give more of myself away. So, I did. I did until, in the process of becoming an accomplice to their crimes, I no longer wanted to. But I learnt they would keep trying to take my body anyway, and they did. And so, I became a pretty ghost. When I woke up with the boy on top of me, I pretended to be asleep because I had learned that being seen and heard are not mutually exclusive and that no didn’t mean no. Exchanging my body as currency for love was a means to a false end, and I had lost myself in the pursuit of superficial love. So, before he woke, I gathered my clothes and was gone like the ghost I had become. I did not cry. I did not call the police. I did not tell my Mum. I forgot how to make eye contact and cut my hair short, and at night, to avoid the unlit surfaces of the city, I learned to walk the long way home.