FOR BROCK TURNER, THE RAPIST, FROM WOMEN WHO KNOW WHAT HE IS
I want to know how you took, as a child.
When your mother told you ‘no,‘
did you bite at her fingers, snarl until
the spit slipped down your chin—
contort into animal, control knotted back
into swarms in your fingers.
Did they tell you how to sting, without
thinking about the purse of skin it leaves?
Did she call you her tempered little boy,
calm all the while—
were you listening with swinging smile,
pleasured, dripping jaw swung open, still,
from around the corner when your father
told her in the kitchen: ‘this is just how boys are’?
When her bandaged arm held you close,
said sweet in your ear, ‘none of this is your fault.’
Did your father ask why you stopped biting,
if you really wanted what was being kept from you?
Did he ask you in front of your mother,
as she cradled the place where the raw skin was wrapped up?
As she nodded along,
this was not enough.
You, 7, learn to swim.
You, finding most joy in pulling those who
cannot, by their ankles, into the
deepest end of the water.
And again, you carefree boy,
again you are forgiven. The girl you pulled
in, she wore her best dress,
which now has no use for her anymore.
It will always hold the memory
of taking on water
and threatening to drag her
further under.
Your father says she should have learned,
this would not have happened
if only she was better at knowing
how boys play. This is how men play.
You, 13, reach under the skirt of a girl
in the lunch line, grab hard like your hand
is learning how to make anything
its own. You hiss, boy, something like ‘I like my
girls thick.’ You leave marks where your fingernails
tried to teach her your name. Where she tried to
keep her skin her own.
You, using the word 'mine’
in honors English essays, in place of naming unconquered
places. Just places, with names you did not bother to learn.
She hears you grit your teeth next to her ear
at night, decides on jeans, the next day,
and the next. Decides to call herself 'unclaimed.’
Easier that way,
they cannot say she earned that hand,
cannot say her name sounds different, today.
This is the war you breed.
And we,
knowing the ways they will promise us,
vow to us, seep into us—
we are not worth protecting.
You, still that pillar worth protecting.
For you, and for your father—
did you go to see the dust
they dug out of her?
We know you.
We went to meet the dust.
We have seen that dirt,
that muck,
those twigs,
those photographs—
insides swollen, from— what did you say?
from coming too fast? coming, as she slept?
Coming, without knowing she still had skin?—
And we, we see ourselves in that
swell, in that debris carved out
of the body.
We see it every day.
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