for one, maybe two, years
after, i play words with friends
against one of the women that
sexually assaulted me

i was seventeen, and i
******* begged for them to stop,
please stop,
you’re hurting me

no one else at the wedding
after party heard me, music too
loud and champagne flowing too
freely

and the first person i told,
before she dropped me off
in front of the wrong house,
said, ‘i’m not calling you
a liar….but’

(her ******* husband
groped me, four years later,
and let me tell you, that’s some
irony i could have done without)

and the second person i told,
looked me in the eye and said
i was making the assault into
something it wasn’t, and i
needed to forgive those two women

i stopped telling people,
after that, choosing instead to
bleed out how wrong being touched
in that way made me feel

i don’t remember what i
was wearing, and i suppose
there’s a certain kindness in that,
my brain closing off that particular
memory so securely

i don’t remember what i
was wearing the first time,
either, but why would i, after
more than twenty years?

i lose count after the third time,
telling her to stop touching me
that way, looking around at other
patrons in the restaurant, that know
both of us, begging them to
say something, to help me,
but no one does

no one does
no one does
no one does

and this is a bandage, wrapped so
tight, that i do not pick at,
nor do i lift up the edge to
see what gangrenous ruin
lies beneath

and still, some nights i find myself
standing on the knife's-edge of
that dark abyss, haunted by the
ghost of something forced upon me

but i do not rage,
i do not drink until i am unable to stand,
unable to remember how all of
those hands felt on my skin,
i do not bleed over those ghosts

i do not bleed over those ghosts,
but sometimes the noose of that
trauma is so unforgiving i can’t breathe,
and i am seventeen again,
and i am twelve,
and i am five, maybe six

and these wounds, they are
open and screaming and bleeding
and so ******* hungry and i am
just so tired of being haunted

i am just so tired of being haunted