These words are for longing to
Be returned to belonging
To hear sorry
I’m sorry it happened
And I’m sorry for nothing
It was you
//
One day
You will feel the weight of your sorry as it slides along, crawls through and vomits itself out of the hole between your nostrils and your chin
Sorry it happened
And sorry for everything
This body was mine before it was yours
I’ve since fallen in love but I still cannot fall asleep
I’m sorry for nothing
Sorry you didn’t
You didn’t say sorry
//
The whole room is watching
And it’s easier to call crazy
Easier for you and easier for the world to hold onto the story where good men don’t -
Politics gets torn between the world as it is and the world as it should be, lacking the self-awareness to realise that its sole task is to navigate the two
- Good men don’t rape bad women and
Good men certainly don’t rape good women because
Good men are good and
good boys don’t cry
and they certainly don’t rape
and if they really have to do one or the other
they’ll choose tears
every time
//
So instead there are Good men and confused women and rape cases that never close
My rape case never closed
It sits under my bed, next to the shoebox for my first boyfriend, spilling over with papers
I still have the knickers
//
When the room became a court room it was easier to ask is eight years fair
Than is what I did fair
I appreciate that being asked whether you took someone’s body is difficult
Because rape is difficult
//
Listen to it. Hear the word; rape. Hear how difficult
Hear yourself
Rape and apologise
//
Because rape is difficult
Especially after you’ve put your dick away and now you’re just a very sorry human being sorry in a court room across from a woman who is was and forever will be naked
No bruises no trace no funeral
//
Women rarely forgive men who kill other women even when the men are their sons
But what if the woman in question still inhabits the machinations of meat that constitute what it is to have a body but not to be alive in it
What do we say to her?
Her voice
My voice
Your voice
- ’s ‘she’s crazy’ came louder than I could speak my ‘this is my body’
Because there are few occasions when I’ve had to say it exert it lay it bare and naked in the cold for you to spit on
This is my body
This is my own
//
I touch my stomach and I cry for I am soft and I am warm, I am alive and I am grateful
I beat
//
I will forever remember waking to your hand in mine
Not clutching at fingers or squeezing at digits but entering
A body which you did not know
Not your hand in my hand but your hand in my body
That body was mine and I am tired of the hail
//
I used to sleep so kindly that my unconscious body let you fit your fingers inside me before I woke
My mouth will never be so relaxed as to allow you the same
I will not leave space for you nor breath for you
You spat on my body when you did what you did
I do not need to see beyond reasonable doubt in times new Roman-anything
Existing was enough existing is enough existing will always be enough
//
This is my body
I am proud to reek with self-respect
I am unashamed
Slug off you hairless caterpillar
"The first time afterwards that I saw a raised loo seat I laughed and I cried simultaneously. It was merely the gentlest of reminders that there exist people in the world who pee in the same way as him. The first time afterwards that I put pen to paper, I described him as a ‘hairless caterpillar.’ Total venom twinned with the laughable insult of a child. Sexual assault has left me flooded with fear whilst being the first to say that the fear is often laughable. Able to articulate that the fear is there for good reason whilst being able to see that the fear is unreasonable. I feel entirely unreasonable. Words and, in particular, poems - where the words don’t have to form victim impact statements or testimony or even full sentences - have helped me cope and capture how I feel. To realise that it's allowed to both be terrified of pee streams into loo basins and find that fact hilarious. I wrote these words because I’m angry and I’m tired and the viciousness with which I first wrote the words ‘hairless caterpillar’ still sums it up best."