This graphite rendering on vellum—a hazy Mylar paper I used while drafting during my studies of architecture—is a memory drawn from moments remembered in a kitchen chair.

Protecting my skull. Waiting for the calm. His remorse. His promises to change—to take hold.

He takes his position to overpower me.

These two drawings hold the same moment within the passage of time. In one, he is in the foreground and I recede into shadow. In the other, I bring myself forward and he becomes the past.

The violence does not change.

Only the focus does.

For years, so much attention has been given to his abuse and violations. While I chase justice, he runs from accountability. Distance and time become abstract, and his control takes new form. But there is another body in this image.

Mine.

The body that learned to protect its head. The body that remembers. The body and mind that hung by a thread. The thread that led to reclaiming my autonomy.

Years later, the respondent took this artwork to the police and attempted to use it as a basis for action against me. The police determined there was no basis for action. All they saw was the silhouette of a man with his fist raised over a woman. There is something profound in that reversal.

An image I made about being subjected to violence became another occasion in which the person who used violence against me attempted to invoke an institution against me.

But this drawing is not violence.

It is a record of violence.

It is memory made visible.

It is testimony.

And I remain the author of what happened to me.