I Would Leave Me If I Could: A Collection of Poetry(15)
when for so long
I’ve drawn inspiration only from
longing?
Pink cheeks.
Stubble ripples across them
like a flower
still clinging to the earth
it was plucked from.
Your eyes are static electricity.
You’ve missed me.
A STORY LIKE MINE
It’s 2009
and I’m 14
and I’m crying.
Not really sure where I am, but I’m holding the hand of my best friend Sam in the waiting room of a Planned Parenthood.
The air is sterile and clean.
The walls are that “not gray but green.”
And the lights are so bright they could burn a hole through the seam of my jeans.
My phone is buzzing in the pocket.
My mom is asking me if I remembered my keys ’cause she’s closing the door and she needs to lock it.
But I can’t tell my mom where I’ve gone.
I can’t tell anyone at all.
You see,
my best friend Sam was raped by a man who we knew ’cause he worked in the after-school program.
He held her down with her textbooks beside her.
He covered her mouth and then he came inside
her.
So now I’m with Sam at the place with a plan waiting for the results of a medical exam.
She’s praying
she doesn’t need an abortion.
She couldn’t afford it.
Her parents would “like totally kill her.”
It’s 2002
and my family just moved.
The only people I know are my mom’s friend Sue and her
son.
He’s got a case of Matchbox cars and he says that he’ll teach me to play the guitar if I just keep quiet.
The stairwell beside Apartment 1245
will haunt me in my sleep as long as I’m alive and I’m too young to know why it aches in my thighs but I must lie.
I must lie.
It’s 2012
and I’m dating a guy.
I sleep in his bed and I just learned to drive.
He’s older than me, and he drinks whiskey neat.
He’s paying for everything (this adult thing is not cheap).
We’ve been fighting a lot.
Almost 10 times a week.
But he still wants to have sex and I just want to sleep.
He says
I can’t say no to him, that this much I owe to him.
He buys my dinners, so I need to blow him.
He’s taken to forcing me down on my knees.
I’m confused
’cause he’s hurting me while he says “please.”
And he’s “only a man”
and these things he “just needs.”
He’s my boyfriend so why am I filled with unease?
It’s 2017
and I live like a queen.
And I’ve followed damn near every one of my dreams.
I’m invincible!
and I’m so fucking naive.
I believe I’m protected ’cause I live on a screen.
Nobody would DARE
act that way around me.
I have earned my protection, eternally clean.
Till a man who I trust gets his hands in my pants.
But I don’t want none of that?
I just wanted to dance?
I wake up the next morning like I’m in a trance.
And there’s blood.
My blood.
Is that my blood?
Hold on a minute…
You see
I’ve worked every day since I was 18.
I’ve toured everywhere from Japan
to Mar-a-Lago, I even went onstage that night
in Chicago
when I was having a miscarriage.
I pied the piper!
I put on a diaper!
And sang out my spleen to a roomful of teens.
What do you mean this
happened
to
me?
(You can’t put your hands on me?
You don’t know what my body has been through.
I’m supposed to be Safe
Now.
I’ve “earned it.”) The year is 2018
and I’ve realized that nobody is safe as long as she is alive and every friend that I know has a
story
like
mine.
(And the world tells us that we should take it as a compliment.) But heroes like Ashley and Simone and Gabby,
McKayla and Gaga, Rosario,
Ali.
Remind me
this is the beginning, it’s not the finale.
And that’s why we are here, and that’s why we rally.
It’s about Olympians and a medical resident.
And not one
fucking
word
from the man
who is president.
It’s about closed doors secrets
and legs
in stilettos,
from Hollywood Hills to the projects and ghettos.
When babies are ripped from the arms of teen mothers, and child brides globally cry under covers, who don’t have a voice on the magazine covers and you can’t walk anywhere if your legs aren’t covered, they tell us
“take cover.”
But we are not free
until all of us are free.
So love your neighbor.