by Leyna R.
Dear Empathetic Male Poet,
Thank you for taking the time to share my story!
I have been searching forever for a way to tell people what happened to me
and have them fucking listen,
so imagine my gratefulness to find you,
voice like the air raid preceding my attack,
sound that people just cannot seem to ignore.
You see, when I talk about rape, somehow,
I am the din of a shattered white abyss,
mosquito buzzing too close to your ear,
something you patiently ignore until it is in an easier place
to smack away,
somewhere you can then point and laugh at the blood smear,
but through the megaphone of your voicebox,
I can talk through you!
and your dulcet tones soothe people
into swallowing the sharp rocks
I have always called a daily meal.
It’s like the world just can’t stand to see
pain without hope,
they want every story like a fucking fairy tale,
and with you, they get the tragedy of my pain
wrapped into a gentler, more aware kind of man,
the hope that I will not forever be cast as an object
only conquerable by your powerful, cruel-hearted penis;
no, now, I can be conquered by your magic healing penis!
Don’t be surprised that my story now contains an addendum
in which your special wizard staff spurts out some spiritual superglue
and just sorta sticks together all the pieces of me pushed apart by other penises.
it’s like the signature on a free messaging app,
it seems to add itself to the end of whatever I say.
It’s like you don’t even know what you’re saying!
Just to check in,
do you know what you’re saying?
Have you stopped to take a second to hear your actual message,
or do you love the sound of your own voice too much to get past it?
Because I have been listening to every word,
the way you thoughtfully tell the rapt audience how you think I felt,
and I will always remember how easily you spoke for me,
took your payment in praise,
and left me totally fucking healed,
clearly,
by your fucking magic dick.
And at first I was mad,
listening to you
tell my story in a way I am not allowed to,
but then I realized,
I should be thanking you
for doing your part
for empathetic male poets and other victims of oppression everywhere!
I don’t even need to write poetry now!
Instead, I have all this time to show you what it’s like
to live a life that gives you these kinds of stories.
I offer you thanks in the form of fear.
Will I be around a corner waiting for you?
Will I threaten people you love like I do you?
Will anyone ever stop me, or will they think
you are at worst a joke
and at best a cautionary tale,
a stunning three-minute display for someone else,
maybe someone who does the exact things that terrify you,
maybe someone you hate,
maybe me?
You deserve a skipping heart (and the subsequent imagined dismemberment) –
to feel your body a venus flytrap and your stomach a terrified fly trying to escape –
the only fitting gratefulness I can give you is your own personal hell to capitalize on!
And I wish you well learning to write
about that.