Shuubun in September

This.  There is a word for this

direction we are sliding toward

this melancholy rage against

the dying weakening waning

of the light this moment when

darkness and light are in balance,

and then the darkness takes over

for a time and we slide into slumber

praying to wake again at some next

balance point when darkness is at

its height and then it turns again

and we see at last what light breaks

What it costs to believe

My mother said

she

believes

me.

It costs

her nothing

now to say

she would have

given up the church

that helped keep

her alive

if I had told

and the church

had not

believed me

then.  When she said that,

I believed

my mother. 

I

believed

my mother

until we talked, and I

discovered that

my mother

does not believe

a woman coming

forward now with

nothing to gain and

everything to lose,

a grown woman

telling now,

when it costs

this woman

something

(maybe everything). 

Believing this woman

would cost

my mother something

that she is not willing

to pay, and I wonder

if my mother really

would

believe

me

if it cost

her something,

and I find

I don't know

if I believe

she would.

This is a well-written, short prose piece from Rachael Denhollander on the same topic.  I highly recommend it.

falling

this autumn I hurt
in all the broken places
fingers to feet to heart

Before you ask

Were you wearing suggestive clothing?

     My 6th grade school uniform

• plaid skirt below the knee
• knee socks
• shoes
• Oxford button-up shirt probably buttoned all the way up

Had you been drinking?

     Hadn't ever had any alcohol
          that stuff smells disgusting

Were you wearing lots of makeup?

     No makeup, no interest in makeup
          gets all over everything when you sweat
               during recess

Were you flirting?

     Am asexual
          had never flirted or shown any kind
               of sexual interest
                    in anyone

Were you in the wrong place?

     In the hallway
          outside the 6th grade classroom
               after school in broad daylight
                    waiting safely inside for my late ride home to arrive
                         looking through the glass doors
                              with a view of the playground

none of this should really matter
because the only reason 
sexual assaults happen 
is because people 
sexually assault
other people

Dear family member

Dear family member,

I know that, to you, this situation is wholly political, that in your mind, there is no way this person could be telling the truth.  I know that’s where it starts and stops for you.  I know that you cannot imagine that any of the controversy is NOT political, that any of the anger and sadness is genuine, real, and not motivated by anything related to party lines.  I know that your party would rather have you believe in a conspiracy that seems rather incredible than believe that someone would see it as their duty to tell the truth about someone who is being considered for a position with one of the highest levels of power in our country.  I know that your party has convinced you that no one, after years of silence, could possibly choose out of a sense of duty as a citizen to speak up about their pain, knowing that

• they would face harassment, doubt, and  judgment outside a court of law
• their life would be at risk
• they would never be safe again wherever they went
• they were giving up the normal-seeming life they had pulled together over the years

unless it was part of conspiracy formulated by the other party.  (I fail to see that she has anything to gain here except more pain made extremely public, but you seem unable to even consider this.)  I also know that you are not trying to hurt people, that you are merely trying to clearly state your opinion on a very fraught topic.

I suspect that there may be a sudden silence about this issue among the female friends who have agreed politically with you on everything in the last few years; I suspect you don’t know what that means.  You seem so blinded by party politics that you don’t see the situation with anything approaching openness or compassion, that you don’t understand how personal it is for people who have been through the same thing.  (I’m pretty sure you have not been through the same thing because I would find it hard to believe that anyone who had would be able to be this blind just because of political affiliation.  I’m sorry if I’m wrong about that and am assuming too much.)

I know that it’s likely you are unaware of the psychology of sexual assault victims / survivors*.  I suspect you have never sought to educate yourself about it. I even suspect that no one has ever personally confided in you their story of their own sexual assault.  My reason for believing this is that you can still react in a way that asks the question: "Why speak out now?  Why not when it happened?"

(CONSIDER SKIPPING THIS GRAPHIC IF YOU HAVE EXPERIENCED SEXUAL ASSAULT)

You posted this on Facebook today, without awareness or irony, and, as far as I can tell, without any shred of understanding or empathy.  It is an answer to the question, "Why don’t victims speak out?"

Family member that I thankfully only see once a year, YOU are part of the problem, part of the reason why victims don’t speak out.  This kind of blind, politically-driven opinion is a slightly different (and much more repugnant) flavor of the same old story that leads to only a fraction of assaults being reported.  When you say what you said above, what people who have survived or will survive sexual assault hear is, "It's safer not to tell the truth.  Even when it matters.  Especially when it matters."

I can now add your view as expressed in this Facebook post to my list as a perfect example of why I would never disbelieve someone’s assault story simply because they didn’t file a police report at the time.

Here’s another list, for you, of some of the reasons why I didn’t report it when I was sexually assaulted

• I was in 6th grade.
• We grew up together in a smallish town and attended the same church and church school, a place where we were never taught anything about sex or consent or anything even vaguely related to the two, and my dad and his dad were friends and my sister and his sister were friends.
• I was mortified and disgusted and had no idea how to deal with the overwhelming feelings and confusion. 
• I knew it would cause trouble, and my mom was (I was pretty sure, though no one would TALK to me about it) dying at the time.The principal hated me and had shown clearly that the consequence of me reporting observing anything having to do with inappropriate sexual stuff was for her to scream at me in her office for what seemed like hours, accusing me of being a liar, troublemaker, and all-around evil human being who was just successful at hiding behind a good girl mask. 
• My father had expressed that old-school sentiment of, "What did she expect when she _______? (She had it coming)" when we heard about some poor girl being assaulted after drinking or being alone on the sidewalk at night or wearing makeup and a short skirt.
• I knew it would cause trouble, and my mom was (I was pretty sure from objective physical evidence, though no one would TALK to me about it because I was only in 6th grade) dying at the time.
• I didn’t even know I had other options.  (See: "I was in 6th grade")

I know it’s not exactly fair to put you on that list of why I didn’t report as a 6th grader because I didn’t know then that you held such a poisonous view, and I know that this present, particular instance is surrounded by a political cloud due to the nature of the situation and the players and seems somewhat exceptional (or was until 2 other people stepped forward to also volunteer to have their normal lives destroyed), but that’s honestly chaff to me at this point. 

For whatever reason, you don’t want to look or listen, you don’t want to see or hear this person’s claims, and you say you want to see their life further destroyed simply because it is politically inconvenient for you that they are talking here and now, that they are saying that someone your political party chose sexually assaulted them.  When you post things like this on Facebook, when you express these sentiments in real life in person, you are encouraging others, especially the young women in your life, not to tell you or report to anyone, and you are hurting people who didn’t report at the time.  People like me.  Your relative.  It may seem simply political to you, but to me it’s personal.  And because you are related to me and likely by blood or friendship to others who have also been or will someday be sexually assaulted, it really is personal to you, too.  Please keep that in mind.





*Today, right before I saw your post, I learned that "being triggered" doesn’t just mean being offended by a difference of opinion from this one.  It’s a physiological reaction, not a difference of opinion.  It’s surprisingly related to a lot of the current research on chronic pain that I’ve been looking through.

La La Land

How
do you go
to the dollar theater
like you planned
to see La La
Land
after you find out she
is in the hospital
for suicidal
thoughts?
You
don't. Instead,
you stay late at work
until you fix something
and then you go home
and cry and pray and
write because they
are the same
tonight.

if you still loved me sometimes

what I
would like
to know 

sometimes
is if
you
still loved me
sometimes
even when
you hated
me

all the dragonflies of summer's end

nothing will prevent 

the ending of summer

yellow dragonflies

cannot slow it

red dragonflies

cannot stop it

green dragonflies

watch it go

August clouds

I can't tell you how

beautiful the clouds are now 

August goes too fast

Guilty Pleasures

Tiny Adorable Dog cries alone
heart broken, and I take this chance
to lie on the deck without having
to inhale their cigarette smoke

fear and rage

Already they have begun to spin

to twist the story into its usual shape

formerly familiar, suddenly terrifying

because how many others have we

dismissed because this was the only

story told:  armed black man

shots were fired              handgun

recovered at the scene.

How many times did we not know

the details not reported by police accounts

routine traffic stop      child in the car

first aid not immediately rendered

complying with police request  for

license and registration when shot

by police for moving while carrying

a declared and legally permitted weapon?

This story doesn't make sense.  I don't

 want it to be true of this incident in a place

I know and have been let alone other places

I don't know for other people innocent

of any capital  crimes.

How many times have people

gotten away with murder hiding

behind this traditional narrative

we have accepted, all important

facts warped to fit its shape, slicing

off the overhanging edges of truth

with the  careless knife of power?

How terrifying this is, this proof

that even if you do everything right -

young, employed steadily, out with 

your family getting ready to celebrate

your birthday - if you are a black man, 

this is how that day in your life can end:  

you dead because someone 

felt threatened because you 

were doing what they 

told you to do, what you 

were supposed

to do, so what

are we supposed

to do now?

Feeling grey

Green is bursting forth
Missed week of walks in the woods
leave us feeling grey

when wolf cries

when wolf cries

aloud or inside

moon cries too

is hope like this?

the way the tree appears
completely without life
today but could sprout buds
tomorrow if you wait

bittersweet

we watch buds sprout past

one dead leaf that won't let go

spring is bittersweet

when living in the darkness

She talks about how there is no
faith tradition for evangelicals
to follow in the times when one
is living in the dark.  True.
Disciplines and rituals aren't
for evangelicals.  Emotions are more
important and true than
"smells and bells", and where
does that leave those
deep in dark depression
who feel
nothing?
Nowhere
alone.
False.  This
is why it's important to tell true stories
of our times in the darkness,
for truth is light and hope, and hope
in the midst of darkness is
sometimes the only
gift of love we
can give
each other.

another email with no heartbeat

What do you do when
you get another
email about a
nephew you will not
have the chance to know

because your sister
has had another
miscarriage, and you
have no way to give
her any comfort?

I write a poem.
It doesn't really
help anything, but
I still have to write
to make space for tears.

the wrong foot

I hate
how an accidentally
too-long hike can destroy
my health for half a year and
already be eating
into this year,
too.

he asks if

This new brother of mine asks
tough questions, like whether I would want
the death of this family friend to be less
hard for me to deal with

because the truth is that in some ways yes
I would because I am very weak right now, but

mostly I puzzle because I don't understand why
it is so

hard.  Why this death that I still know
next to nothing about?  Why this man
who I interacted with for real maybe
4 times in my life? Is it because he was

younger than my father because his son
was my classmate because he was
someone I admired and wanted to be
happy and because the day he died

my new brother said something about
C.S. Lewis that I wanted to share with him
because it would have made him laugh?

Because it was so sudden and that
scares me because there is never
enough time to be with all the people
we love and admire because the fall

brought death and separation in, and
there is nothing I can do about that 

when I am always so very far away?

winter always comes

light, mouse, deer, leaves, friend

too much death in autumn

winter comes too fast