Dear Survivor: Reclaim the Light
This is a collection of poetry & art from survivors of sexual assault. This work begins to pick up the shards of glass glittering on the beach. Begins to inspect the rounded edges, holds translucent sea glass in an open palm. It invites you to turn it over, a white stone glowing in the sun, and inspect the fractures - cracks that have grown together and healed imperfectly. Fractures that are still healing. Still speaking. These survivors are still speaking. While the pronoun ‘she’ is often assumed for survivors, this book contains stories from all genders, all over the world. We owe it to them to hear their stories. To join them in the on-going fight for survival until survival is no longer the only choice left.
Beyond The Veil Press
@beyondtheveilpress
beyondtheveilpress.com
All of my rapists are white men
They stole my body on a
hotel room floor
In a military base barracks bed,
my boyfriend's bedroom
while pregnant, and my
home
When I was single, I never wore
dresses on dates
Men would ask, then get gutted when I showed up
in pants; their fantasy of hiking up my skirt
to have their way –crushed with denim
I grew up knowing the hands of an uncle
where they shouldn't be
Felt the pressure
of unwanted attention from men at work
who asked my tits out on a date
No one told me about these types
of career decisions
I don’t drink -
when I do, men’s fingers and hands
become blades ripping me from my insides
Someone told me these experiences
make me stronger
My resting bitch face is practiced
I’ve developed a 6th sense of those
around me
Can tell a creep within two steps
I’ve hidden birth control
to keep from getting pregnant
Been told by a doctor I am not allowed
to get my tubes tied
Women grow up and learn quickly that men must
control, touch, have rule over us
Women shamed, or better yet, blamed
They want us to be silent, obedient, warm, and
easy
In the time it has taken me to share
This with you - over 300 women
have been raped
Over one thousand denied health
rights to her own body
Countless more choices were stolen
This is how to be
a woman in America.
The Joke
after Rape Joke by Patricia Lockwood
The joke is that you’re fifteen.
The joke is that he is your ex-boyfriend's best friend.
The joke is you asked him for a ride home.
It doesn’t matter that he joked he was going to rape you when he got you home in the middle of a crowded band room. The joke is you didn’t believe him either and got in his car anyway, the back seat because you were his last stop. The joke is that he told someone else in the car, too.
The joke is that everyone ignores the spaz.
The joke is that he came into the house and took a beer from the bar next to the pool table that wouldn’t even be there if it wasn’t for the skateboard you decided to ride in the house that broke the window, so your dad turned the patio into a game room.
The joke is that you sat on the couch, his clumsy body plopped beside you with his beer in hand.
The joke is his leg is touching your leg.
The joke is you didn’t want him to spill the beer on the couch, so he guzzled it and put it on the floor.
The joke is you didn’t want to kiss him.
The joke is that you hadn’t even tried alcohol yet, and drinking scared you, and so did his closeness.
The joke is you are too young to understand anything in that millisecond when he pushed you down so hard and yanked off your shorts so quickly. Pressed his beer tongue into your mouth, bruising your lips, because he knew you were a good kisser.
Your ex/his best friend had shared every detail of seventh-grade lust on a green grass field during lunch when he taught you to kiss for the very first time with tongues.
The joke is that fingers tore into your body, sliced your softness, and plunged into places you hadn’t even tried to explore on your own yet.
The joke is that you didn’t fight back, that you laid there like a dead animal, eyes someplace else, as you tried to differentiate between the metallic taste of the beer lingering in your mouth and the smell of blood in the air.
The joke is that your little sister came home from school, which stopped him.
The joke is she only saw a beer bottle on the floor. The joke is you tried to wash the blood off your panties in the laundry room after and couldn’t stop crying or the blood from coming out of you.
The joke is a police report.
The joke is no trip to the hospital.
The joke is him denying everything, saying that you BOTH drank a beer. That YOU WANTED it too.
The joke is a district attorney saying it’s your word against his.
The joke is you’re still a virgin because this is not considered sex.
The joke is health insurance authorizing only six sessions to fix rape.
The joke is you are not invisible. The joke is finishing out the school year and being called slut in the halls.
The joke is hiding in a teacher’s office for the rest of the year because you shared classes.
The joke is not being able to get out of bed on most days but being told it’s better to get back to normal.
The joke is nothing will ever be normal.
You felt crazy for too many years later and wrote notebooks full of everything except yourself.
The joke is you got really good at pretending to be light and happy.
The joke is eating every feeling fried or with whipped cream.
The joke is that you will remember every detail for the rest of your life; those minutes forever shaped you into a fragment of your former self and how every thrust of his fist ripped innocence from your core.
The joke is putting yourself back together with spit and sticks, pretending you are someone else to make everyone around you comfortable.
The darkness is not a joke.
The joke is learning how to let anyone touch you again.
The joke never goes away; it happens decades later, with people in common and a friend suggestion on Facebook. The joke revisits at a reunion where old school friends ask you about him as if you have kept tabs on whatever life he has enjoyed. The joke is this is the only thing they remember about you. The joke sucks all the laughter out of the air. The joke screams THIS IS NOT A JOKE this was rape.
MY rape cries out for the right to be told.
MY rape happened precisely how he joked it would.
It was not a joke.