Academic conversations about consent are a pure form of agony,
Listening to students and Professor toss around the word like it's a hypothetical commodity,
As if there is question that autonomy and dignity belong to every living thing in that room.
We are asked to dissect the most intimate of physical safeties as if this is a lesson in biology,
Solve 'consent' like a particularly challenging calculus problem,
Pretend as if this didn't happen in the confines of my body.
It's excruciating to have to take an equation,
We'll start with y=mx+b,
And calculate which variables determine basic human decency.
I was young, female, gay, autistic, bipolar,
Clinging to his professions of love like they could stitch the gaping emotional wounds,
And somehow that didn't make me human when he did the math.
I don't know how to argue, Professor, with which philosophical tools,
Professor, that I was a person, Professor,
When he decided to **** me.