4/7/21 - Acutely Aware in April

trigger warnings: rape, sexual assault, bugs

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. And I think that is so funny, because if you’ve ever been assaulted, you are constantly, acutely aware of it.

Aware of how quickly your body can be painted as not yours, never was.

And how much easier it is not to fight, not to squirm, but grimace and detach your mind from the lifeless pink form, you so proudly used to dance around in.

This body, this beautiful, amazing, capable body of yours, has been possessed and then discarded as quickly as if it never happened, with who and when and what, so many times, you tend to forget.

It’s not so much that you forget, though —

it’s that you wish you couldn’t remember.

wish you didn’t know the prickly familiar feeling of a strange,

sweaty hand being forced into your folds and creases.

wish you didn’t know the stomach churning swoon of sticky substance (that isn’t yours, but His) seeping from you, drying on your inner thighs (that you scrub so hard with your loofah later that layers of your skin peel away, leaving you rawer than before)

And even after you explicitly remember (if there is one thing you remember for sure absolutely is this) saying:

“Please, whatever you do, don’t cum in me.”

But this gets ignored, as everything else always does.

Does this make you feel icky? Does this crawl under your skin and fester?

These hands and bodies of fallen angels who claimed you as their own, dug into your thighs, your pelvis, your spine, and all of your soft spots — dug in there and there and there and laid eggs.

Itchy eggs that eventually hatched into larvae, that are small, white, slimy.

They crawl and ooze around inside of you. And as much as you scratch, and pick, and plead

the larvae never leave to return home.

To return home to the Orpheuses who don’t have to carry the weight of themselves.

But your dancing pink sack of bones and cartilage does carry the weight of him and him and him and him and him.

Sometimes in the middle of the deep night, when you are curled up, and deeply alone

the larvae ball up in the base of your throat. A wriggling gray mass that threatens to choke and a reminder that

You Are Not Safe

in amongst your pink sheets and green walls.

no matter how many times you chant

“It’s not my fault.”

No, it’s not your fault.

It is the fault of the decrepit who dared to own you, some of whom you are still friends with on facebook (glad he’s in a happy relationship now)

some of whom still watch your snapstories (which are mostly just memories now — Do You Remember?)

And the people to who you’ve confessed these men’s sins to,

but they still choose to ignore, forget, move on.

It’s more comfortable that way,

you understand, you really do.

But if we were to play the blame game,

those would be who were at fault.

Not you. Not you, you sweet, strong, butterfly of a sagittarius.

How you wish you could shake those at fault awake to your

horrifying reality of goosebumps and sweaty nightmares.

How you wish no one ever would have to experience what you know

happens in the deep reality of existing.

How you wish you could stop remembering.

How you know you will never forget. Can’t.

But April persists and so do you.