I said no in the kitchen
Standing
When you tried to put
Your lips on mine

I lie on the bed
As my ability to move
Or even speak leaves me
Then here you come
And you sit right
On top of me

Hands in places
They don't belong
You lift my limp arm
And place it around you
As if it's a romantic gesture
Or even my choice
Then you kiss my lips
Despite my no
With my eyes closed

My pants are in your way
You remove them
I lie there
Body limp
Eyes still closed

I'm able to move
An inch out of the way
When you try to do
The unthinkable thing
Not once
But three times

So you settle for
What you could get
Which was everything else
As my body was limp

Eyes open just enough
To stare my anger
Into your soul
I know you felt it
As you sat between my feet
When you were finished with me
Relieve yourself then use my sink
And then I sleep
And then you leave

"Let me walk you home
Let me keep you safe
Its dangerous out there
I wouldn't want you to get *****"

Little boy, looked us straight in the eye
He jumped off the bed
And ****** himself saying
"It's pecker time"
He opened his mouth
And he pointed in
Because grandpa said
And grandpa did.

Little boy, four years old
Wouldn't sleep at night.
"The witch" he'd cry
"Lives in the street lamp.
The witch will come for me!"
He'd scream and cry.
No one knew why,
But grandpa did.

I smile and wait for the Autumn,
for the long breaths and deep pauses of Summer to fade

I sit on the porch swigging spirits, but the ghosts are within me and not
without

I swallow pills,
one blue, two white
two round, one flat

pills to stop my heart from racing
pills to stop the twitching
pills to **** the memories that lurk, like dark men in alley ways

he was not dark
it was not an alley way

there was no long grass to lick
my body, no rough wall to bruise my back

no, it was not outside at all

laying in a darkened migraine room, wrapped in a filthy sleeping bag

whilst strangers laugh in kitchens, smoking *** and drinking beer

but I still know the weight of a man leaving a bleeding, stinging, ****

and the frantic showering off of evidence

I will be asked if it was slinky and if my lips were scarlet

I will cry into the pillows I wish he'd smothered me with

every Summer, I will sit
and shake with memories

as if the very sun were to rub salt into my wounds

I will count out pills, swallowing them with lukewarm water

and I will wait

wait, wait, wait

for Autumn

Emphatic yes.
Mechanical gestures attempt to arrest form,
Bind in possession a moment no longer.
A willful lash,
Resistance necessary,
Violent response to denied consent.
Constant memories.
Accountability never lost,
Never assumed initially.
Mantles are places,
For trophies,......



Remember to buy flame retardant.

two months ago, he pushed me into a corner and grabbed my breast
two months ago, he told me not to worry and groped away
two months ago, i frantically fought against his touch
two months ago, i was sexually assaulted.

one month ago, i was still the only one who know
one month ago, i blamed myself
one month ago, life seemed worthless
one month ago, i wanted to die

three weeks ago, i reached out for help
three weeks ago, i realized the trigger of all my self hate
three weeks ago, i came home hoping to leave it all behind
three weeks ago, i cried

today, i am numb to the memory
today, i don't give myself enough credit
today, i am still insecure because

two months ago, i was sexually assaulted.

I cried for you
a flash of silver
between my teeth
lips, scarlet and drip-
ing

at seventeen I knew
the weight of you,
each hair on your arms
as you pressed my back
into the stained carpet

the Japanese tattoo
that struck me,
tracing the thick, black lines
with my eyes

a quick glimpse of my
grandfather, mixing bread
with milk and whiskey

flowers that grew, evergreen
in the garden where
he'd chase me

laughter ringing through the air,
cheesecloth blue dresses
and black, buckled shoes

you eat me, heart first
then each sense in turn.

I welcome the loss of
them all.

The touch of your
nails in my thighs. The
taste of blood as your
rotten mouth consumes
my own. The sound
of flesh beating flesh.
The sight of sweat beads
resting on your brow. The
smell of ***** seeping
through skin.

In a moment
I am no longer
a girl

but a woman eating
the words off my clothes,
smarting, sinister ****

a ***** kitchen floor
is waiting. The cool relief
of the tiles on my
burning skin

and a reflection of a woman,
no longer whole, yet still
alive

Girl says no.
Girl says I said no.

Boy says nothing with his mouth but
moves with hands that say let me start my
cross-examination of the witness and
looks at her with confused eyes that say
may I remind you, ma’am, that you are under
oath. Would you like to change your answer?

Girl says no, I said no.
She is jury,
she is judge,
she is verdict.
She is gavel banging against sound block
on a case closed.

Boy still says nothing but sheds
his clothes like last season’s skin
and when his jeans hit the floor
they say Your Honor, I am asking
you to recuse yourself.
He is still confused because
buying dinner is just a more polite way
of buying a ******* her knees
so he wrongfully believes that
his libido has the right
to stand in as a judge in appeals court
to overturn her ruling.

This is the only trial that she will see
because prosecution does not want
to press charges with a case that they do not believe
will result in a guilty verdict and ****
is still widely accepted as
just a he-said-she-said civil case.



*According to the FBI Uniform Crime Reports out of every 100 rapes, 32 get reported to the police, 7 lead to an arrest, and 3 are referred to prosecutors.

Is a man
who acquiesces to love's embrace
ever sinless? (never a lamb)
always libidinous? (perpetually the wolf)  

I pondered this (stigmatic) question
as I entered the densely-wooded trail,
to seek my analogous answers
in the enchanting mystery of the naked forest--

Much as I had before,
seeking truth and solace in love's embrace;
tucked within her ample *****,
where I had once lain my head
gently flowing with the rise and fall
of her chest--

much like the advances and retreats
of aching waves on the beleaguered shore.

I traveled the woods, taking it all in--
as I, the woods,
and the woods, my love,
and the earth, my foundation,
and the sky:
My god.

I heard avian sprites dance in the thickets and brush,
scampering away from my intrusions.

These birds; be they so timid in my presence?
Or, in their sprite-like visage,
do they simply mirror such intrinsically motivated ambulations;
their impalpable purposes impervious to Man's prodding.  

I feel I seek their fleeting company in my mind's eye,
who wanders incessantly in its dreadful musings,
while my earthly senses
merely soak in what is to be seen.

And I see the naked overturned tree--
victim of the vitriolic hurricane's rages;
who lies ashamed before my queried glances,
silently panning from empty branches
protruding from a battered trunk,
down to her meandering roots--
who look meaningless in their desperate search
for earthly riches.

I almost feel guilty enough to cast my eyes from her sight--
and she is left to only rot in the foliage
that once entertained her life;

and her in turn having once contributed
to the beauty
I precede,

in the impending vernal equinox
alluded by the returning chansonettes
of those dainty birds--
who sing and dance among those branches sturdier than hers.

I felt her woes accumulating in her shameful exposure
to wicked love's throes and I wept alongside her.

(Pitiful, unspoken empathy.)

---

I finally make it to the overlook,
and the rugged solitary picnic table--
where I sit and gaze over the cove,
and the shore that lurks beneath
my commanding earthly footing.

Sighing at the merrymakers perched atop their aquatic vessels--
their cries and screams of elation reaching me,
like mocking phantoms lurking in the woods,
echoing off the hollow shells

(and I write this all with numbing fingers
and tearing eyes, blinking furiously
in frigid but calm winds never hiding their presence)--

I see them, closer now as I make my way to the beach;
but how is it I am the one sinking,
when my feet are the ones planted firmly on the shore?

My shoe'd feet seep into the wet sand--
a dull orange, so lifeless and cold;

Infinitely malleable.

As I once was,

in love's embrace.

---

In the sand:
the lukewarm tracks of man and beast--
traveling side by side,
their destinations a mystery to me,
but their paths encapsulated in the gritty earth
where I once again sense the duality of my soul.

Man and beast imprinted in the malleable confines
of my innermost being, where
the ceaseless waves crash onto the shore
of my battered conscience,

and I feel sinking atop my muddy thoughts
the footprints of man and beast--
the biped and the quadruped--
stepping in tune to nature's melodies.

When I acquiesced to love,
man and beast did not step harmoniously
in the sand,
and the waves of lust crashed over my conscience
like the perfect storm.

In utter torment,
I shied from its ceaseless beatings,
but I foolishly dug my withering tendrils into the mutable sand,
and the wind's booming voice furiously knocked me onto my back--

and though her advancing body had suddenly lain atop mine,
with kisses like icy daggers and eyes like amorphous storm clouds--
her words and my conscience
lay heavier on me still;

On the shore,
and in the woods:
Where I lay naked and exposed,
where I lay shameful and remorseful,
where I lay hopeless and tasteless,
where I lay to this day--

rotting in the foliage that once gave me life,
and I in turn,

beauty.

You are gnawing me down
to the bone

bones

grinding, marrows mixing

blood

red blood that trickles down
my chin

the taste of iron and oxygen

you were my first, you know

(no one will believe that)

blind drunk and filthy finger
nails

scratching out the letters of
my name

my heart withered and weak

ribs breaking under the weight

(the dead weight)

of a man