pleas bring in another new year

Teachers have supported my expression through writing. They encourage me to articulate my thoughts and feelings. But my mentors don't know that men tore me in half and down til I learned to breathe through the ground, so I write from the grave that's become my body. I'm buried. alive. but just barely.

The anti-body paradigm that privileges the male mind has left me weak from just trying to survive--fighting off pathogens and sexual pathologies that render me violently victimized and ill. Shamelessly by your hands I've been groped but that's nothing compared to being blindfolded with a knife at my throat or the time I was stopped by a man with what I prayed was a gun under his coat. Being in a state of both living and dying I'd prefer pulling the trigger over being forced to believe that this is how men have learned to express their love, their insecurity.

I hear stories from those who have given up the fight because too many claim a right to life but not for those who give birth to it. Walking among corpses- this is no exaggeration- I go home to a war-zone where strangers sneak through bedroom windows. How unexpected!, he raped her and fled but this time it wasn't papa, husband, or friend. I now realize that I can no longer place my trust in strangers. Anonymity is hurtful, too.

And in the same week, walking home in the cold, I watched the power unfold through a kick and a punch to a woman's gut. He's an expert at this, you can tell, because he deploys missiles where her clothes will not reveal his violence.

With such persistence, perhaps you can understand how confusing it can be to be comfortable in a quite existence. To be alone in the night is a blessing, and no one would get this unless they knew the humiliation we've been conditioned to feel towards our bodies. How are we to speak of such taboos, like what happens to women and girls, when the talk of menstrual blood makes us queasy? The thought of violent bloodshed on sheets and in streets is unspeakable.

These are all true stories that happened this week! Please believe me and don't dismiss me as too radical a feminist. It's true that I am, but you should be, too, because a radical change is completely necessary. And I'm only saying this because I know there are many who would simply rather forget than constantly attempt to make you hear their desperate pleas of "no!" "stop!"

"This can't be happening to me."

-1/08