Sometimes I forget that I want to get better
It's harder to scream when you don't remember what happened to you
When your thoughts are only pictures
Not the chair, the couch, the carpet, the walls
It's everywhere, even with the best intentions

Like ****** Assault Awareness Month posters plastered all over my college
Even though we read epic poems by Derek Walcott
The man convicted of sexually harassing multiple women
And still teaches at Harvard
But my professor didn't feel it was pertinent information
Until my friend asked about it in class
Both he and Google claim it was a smear campaign
Even though he most likely touched every woman who testified.
They say we burn our own houses down
But we're left behind in the rubble

Senior year of high school
I get into an argument with my lunch table
They tell me how some women like to accuse high profile people of ****
When they are on top
See: Bill Cosby
My face is hot by this point in the conversation
I try to spit words out, but they sizzle up in midair
My friend asks
"If this happened, why are they all coming forward now?"
They say we burn our own houses down
But we're left behind in the rubble

A year earlier
When a boy with rogue hands and boiling breath
Caused my body and my words to freeze into my skin
I tried to scrub the dirt from myself
More times than I care to remember
I tell a friend
He tells me I should have reported it
No proof, next in line please
I tell another friend
She says I probably just regret it
I will get over it soon enough
They say we burn our own houses down
But we're left behind in the rubble

This world has built the home of my attacker up around me
I know that recovery is the price I pay for living in this body
When seeing his face is no longer wanting to **** myself
When purging will not control the places my shriveled up corpse was dragged to
But how can I want to get better
When I see how we are blamed for our own imprisonment?
When songs about **** are in every commercial
Every grocery store aisle
Every radio station that comes on repeat?

Recovery is the price I pay for living in this body
But sometimes it would be easier
To stop paying rent.