my rape poem.
I hate you.
I hope you contract disease
So you can feel what it’s like to have something
(that’s not you)
Eat you from the inside.
At the very least, I wish you suicide.
I didn’t know it then -
What it meant to have my wrists held down
What it meant to feel the jackhammering of a man I didn’t want
What it meant to not want and still receive
What it meant to see assault as another one night stand
What it meant to think “I ought to enjoy this”
Because-
I went on my own
I was drunk and texted him
I got in his uber
I went to his home
I slept in his bed
(with just my underwear on
conveniently on my stomach.)
But then I woke up when he got up
I heard the faucet running
Toothbrush scrubbing
And thought it strange to be brushing teeth so early.
I felt the bed move when he came back
I felt my underwear slide down to reveal the only part of me he saw-
a hole to put his dick in.
The spit he used for lube was cold
His breath was soulless.
It all took less than ten minutes.
“I don’t want sex, just to know you,” he said in text before
I remembered this when I wiped him off as best I could.
I said “I have a dog to feed,”
To the predator before me now
A lie to end this vicious tryst
Because a lie conceived it.
At home I realized I left behind a necklace holding gods I worshipped once
I needed to be absolved
So I went back.
To get them from the mailbox he said left them in
He didn’t want to see me again
And that crushed me
(If it were all a knife, this is where it twisted-
Still in victim
Waterfalls of blood
A gross reminder of the knife’s nature-
to harm)
I saw the hill the uber took us up the night before
The daylight showed me the hill’s shadows for the first time
I grabbed my shit and ran in tears
Sped back down the 101 to a shower that couldn’t wash him off me
So I searched for anything to make him disappear.
A few moons passed
And I thought I found it in the presence of a man
Who could never love me
But would tell his friends I “get it” without ever explaining what it is I “get”
A man who brought me in
To home and family
Who made me feel heard
But made clear he never listened
A man who entered my life to swiftly exit with no remorse.
It all felt less than 10 minutes.
And so I ran again in tears
This time leaving behind the gods I worshipped once.
