Written by: _affable

***

Please tell us your story

Instead of a work of fiction

I chose to write about me instead.

About something I thought was better left unsaid.

They said I was confused, that I misunderstood

Is this what it means to enter adulthood?

It means we're punished for being open?

Or having to pretend we were just joking?

I wasn't a child, I was eighteen years old.

Now I carry it, it comes back around, like the flu or a cold

When it's someone you know

Someone you should be able to trust, where do you even go?

We live in a world where men think being accused

Is the same as being sexually abused.

Where if a woman says something, she's just lighting a fuse.

But I'm starting a fire because I'm sick of living in hues of gray.

I don't want to sit back and pretend I didn't lose something

And then I turn on the tv and feel sick if I watch the news

I see we live in a society where we teach girls to protect themselves

We tell them to make sure he rapes a different girl, not you.

One in three women they say, make sure it's not you.

And when we speak up, we're told he won't be punished.

So why bother saying anything at all?

We're told we won't be believed.

Well not today, not for me.

I'm tired of somedays, and maybe they'll see.

We live in a world where girls clothes are regulated

To make sure it's the boys who are educated.

We tell our girls their cases won't be advocated

That boys will be boys, and their comfort is overrated.

You're homophobic because you don't want

To be treated the way you treat women

And then you don't want to be the villain

Catcalling us on the streets

But what if it was your daughter, your mother, your niece?

Defending yourself, saying we can't take a compliment

And we have no choice but silence when you're dominant.

You walk down the street without a care

But we worry we'll be trapped in some nightmare

Make sure it isn't you.

She'll always be more drunk, showing more skin, be more alone

And when you say nothing, you don't even realize you condone it

When you say she was drunk, it was her fault,

You're blaming a victim, letting him get away,

And you're saying it wasn't really an assault

You say if it was your daughter, you'd kill them

Don't you care what the other daughters will become?

I won't be silenced,

Not in the face of this violence

Not when a boy can rape a girl and get three months

Where they can sit back and call us whores and cunts

Not when he can 'grab em by the pussy'

But if I say something, they'll just shoot me down or call me pushy.

I'm tired of meaning nothing

I'm tired of them thinking touching

Without permission is their given right

Instead of something that is literally disgusting.

This poem demands to be spoken,

And I refuse to be broken.

***

What do you want others to learn from your story?

That we are strong, and we cannot be beaten.