Do you know how frustrating it is,

To be criss-crossed,

Overturned,

Outnumbered,

By men who don’t see my worth?

One whimper from a female bodied person awakens the roar of the 49% that makes up this earth.

I have been talked over, teased, treated like trash,

Grabbed,

Assaulted,

And told that my day to day life,

The encounters I have are PG-13,

My fault,

Sexual assault,

Filled with unanswered prayers, as I stray from the flickering lights of sanction.

I lost my humanity where you touched me,

And it spread.
Like a virus taking a nation,

Ravaging me like your hands I will never forget.

Unlike your face.

I have forcefully forgotten your face

A gray paint smear has wiped you out of my mind,

I stripped you of a face because it was the only power I could take from you.

Your voice eggs me on against the echoing walls of my head,

And confronted me while I filed a police report

5 years too late.

Shame wrapped in bed sheets that smell of musty basements.

The only solace I can find is the repetition of the thought “Thank god you didn’t kill me”.

In my memories- a friend lies lifeless on the floor 6 feet away,

You captured her and not I,

I was only defiled.

Physically and spiritually you planted a seed in me,

That has grown.

I have aged,

And I have grown,

But I have mostly grown to fear you more.

I sense you in every touch.

Diagonals, daggers shot from crossbows,

Physical affection is impossible.

I will never speak your name.

I will never tell my friends.

I will never tell my girlfriend, or my brothers,

Because in the worry that dots the space between their brow,

Flows a river of men telling me I am lying.

And so when you were found not guilty-

I was found useless.

My was body hollowed,

And my idea of what ‘normal’ is was reshaped.

As indefinite as my silence was then,

Is the word RAPE molesting the back of my mind for 9 years-

A fear of the word’s power gave me the knowledge,

That you will always be inside me.

Just like you were then.