Kaleigh Jae Poet Free verse

What Happens When You Tell the Truth pt 2 of 3

(see pt 1 first please, it will make more sense <3)
My brain protected me
when no one else did.
Still, some nights
I drift back.
Back to the office.
Back to the moment
the truth, was weighed
and quickly dismissed.
Back to where my tears
meant nothing.
Because trauma is uncomfortable.
Because truth is unfavorable.
And it's easier to write me off
than to admit that the school failed.
That she failed.
That he is not who they wanted him to be.
And the cruelest part is this:
the system was never meant
to protect people like me.
It was meant to protect itself.
According to the RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) organization:
Only 310 out of every 1,000 sexual assaults are ever reported to police.
Out of those reports
only 50 lead to arrest.
Only 28 lead to felony conviction.
And only 25 lead to incarceration.
That means the vast majority
of survivors watch the person who hurt them
walk away untouched.
Statistics like that
do not describe a broken system.
They describe
a functioning one.
One that quietly calculates
whose pain matters
and whose silence is convenient.
Because when girls watch
what happens to those who report
they learn something.
They learn the cost of speaking.
They learn that telling the truth
means being questioned, doubted, dissected.
What were you wearing?
Why were you there?
Why didn’t you leave?
Why didn’t you scream?
The questions are endless.
But notice
what question is missing.
Why did he do it?
Instead the burden falls
on the person already carrying trauma.
And girls everywhere are watching.
Watching survivors be doubted.
Watching institutions protect themselves.
Watching truth
get buried under procedure.
And they learn the quiet lesson:
Silence is safer.

We should be protecting
the vulnerable,
the voiceless,
And the victims.
We should be protecting
the girl who walks into the office
with fear sitting in her throat
and truth clutched in her hands
like something fragile.
Instead
we interrogate her pain,
scrutinize her memory,
and call it procedure.
But protecting the vulnerable
should not be radical.
Believing victims
should not be controversial.
And listening to truth
should not require courage.
Yet somehow,
in this system
it does.
I was left with nothing. 
Nothing but the echo of my own voice and the trauma he gave me. 

I couldn't sleep for weeks. 
I kept waking up unable to breathe, 
Mid-panic-attack, 
I had flashbacks, real flashbacks, to 
Hands that weren't there, still touching me. 
(see pt 3)

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