The Girls

the girls He will not let you forget. You will wear his hands around your throat, a chain of honey and sweat. His calluses grating across your thighs are still carved in memory, And with dirt-caked fingernails, he demanded everything you ought to be. Expect years before you ever trust another lover, Expect 2:00 AM panic attacks and 11:11 wishes for your mother. Never again will you forget to leave the house without pepper spray, Or forgive your dad for the day He brought you a rape whistle and your brother condoms. You will not forget who is part of the problem. I have felt in the heat of the streetlamps, the bruised fingertips of the women before me. I have fought. I have nursed the kind of fresh Wounds that only ever seem to come from men from whom I receive flags staked in my supple flesh. You pretend to be marauders. You leave the womb, Only to fight tooth and nail to crawl back to such divinity. Broken men searching For liberation behind closed legs and crossed arms To what extent is this too much flirtation, and too little harm? Too many gulps of the story we are drowning in. When will “She wanted it” stop painting over the bruises on her skin? Believe that even in my cries, I did not cry. Though if not our fault, whose? The mayor's son? the valedictorian? the businessman? all will be excused.— Since anyhow we little girls are dead, Slaughtered each time our legs are forced to spread, Mourned each time we remember what really happened in that bed, Buried each time our underwear is rethread. You spend your days executing, then wondering why there are funerals. You were born, you were taught consent That looked like ****. There is blood on your hands, wine-red and iridescent, Hot and thick. tell me, is it drying? Do you still think you’ve won? Because I still bleed on anything I touch. Some wounds cannot be Undone. This poem is an imitation response to Gwendolyn Brook's "the mother"