Jan 2020
1.0 i don’t remember what
i was wearing the day
i was sexually assaulted
and if small mercies exist,
sure that’s one of them?
i wish i didn’t remember
anything at all
like the smell of beer on
the two women’s breaths
or how it felt to
be forcefully trapped between
their bodies as they ground
down onto my 17 year old skin
not one other person
in that veritable sea of
drunk adults heard my
cries begging them to
stop, please stop
stop, i’m a minor
stop, you’re hurting me
and then to be called
a liar by the first person
i ever told
broke me even more
and i’ve got the scars
to prove it
like maybe if i
cut deep enough i
could scrape out what
left me feeling *****
and unclean and used up
2.
and the second person
i so foolishly told
sure that she of all people
would help me
called me a liar, too
though in a more drawn out way
“you’re being dramatic,
making this into something it’s not,
and you need to forgive them”
i sometimes wonder that
if i were still pretending to
be a girl
would people have believed me,
or would it have been worse?
would the ****** assault
have become less letters,
even though that “can’t
happen to men”?
3.
i don’t have answers
to those questions
but what i do know is how
murky the meaning of an
employer groping me while
neither of us is on the clock
truly is
to me, an action like that
like this grown man
old enough to be my father
groping my chest
falls into a gray area between
****** assault and ****** harassment
how dare he
violate me like that
with zero disregard for
my consent and ****** autonomy
and the irony of being called
a liar for being sexually assaulted
by the wife of the man
who sexually harassed me
years later is not lost on me
nor is it appreciated
adding yet more weight
to this trauma until me
knees buckle and my
fingers once again itch
for the blade
4.
i envy those of you that
have forgotten this trauma
of mine
and how easily you absolved
yourselves of any guilt for
looking into my flushed and
tear-stained face and
calling me a liar
i want to know how you
sleep at night
because i sure
as hell don’t
i was wearing the day
i was sexually assaulted
and if small mercies exist,
sure that’s one of them?
i wish i didn’t remember
anything at all
like the smell of beer on
the two women’s breaths
or how it felt to
be forcefully trapped between
their bodies as they ground
down onto my 17 year old skin
not one other person
in that veritable sea of
drunk adults heard my
cries begging them to
stop, please stop
stop, i’m a minor
stop, you’re hurting me
and then to be called
a liar by the first person
i ever told
broke me even more
and i’ve got the scars
to prove it
like maybe if i
cut deep enough i
could scrape out what
left me feeling *****
and unclean and used up
2.
and the second person
i so foolishly told
sure that she of all people
would help me
called me a liar, too
though in a more drawn out way
“you’re being dramatic,
making this into something it’s not,
and you need to forgive them”
i sometimes wonder that
if i were still pretending to
be a girl
would people have believed me,
or would it have been worse?
would the ****** assault
have become less letters,
even though that “can’t
happen to men”?
3.
i don’t have answers
to those questions
but what i do know is how
murky the meaning of an
employer groping me while
neither of us is on the clock
truly is
to me, an action like that
like this grown man
old enough to be my father
groping my chest
falls into a gray area between
****** assault and ****** harassment
how dare he
violate me like that
with zero disregard for
my consent and ****** autonomy
and the irony of being called
a liar for being sexually assaulted
by the wife of the man
who sexually harassed me
years later is not lost on me
nor is it appreciated
adding yet more weight
to this trauma until me
knees buckle and my
fingers once again itch
for the blade
4.
i envy those of you that
have forgotten this trauma
of mine
and how easily you absolved
yourselves of any guilt for
looking into my flushed and
tear-stained face and
calling me a liar
i want to know how you
sleep at night
because i sure
as hell don’t
