violated

saying no applies to
drugs: never boys. do not
say no to boys, they will tear out
your heart and leave your rib cage
jagged and broken, a gaping mouth
screaming its violation. they
will take your tongue, too, take away
your voice until all they can read
is yes in your actions.

this is not
a metaphor.

this is  a simple fact: do not say no to boys.
it is not in your right to deny them.
let them see the ocean of your body, let
them widen the cracks in your sidewalks,
let them warm themselves over the fire in your eyes,
until they decide to suffocate it.

do not say no, even when you are so destroyed that
your hands shake at night, holding your car keys between
your fingers like a gun with an unclear target.
even when you cannot go outside of your room:
the grass between your toes feels too much like
hades’ hands reaching for persephone, the sun’s shadow
haunting you across the concrete feels too much
like apollo relentlessly chasing after daphne.

do not say no, even when you cannot find
the strength or the will or the courage to
drag yourself home.

say nothing, until you’re alone
and can stand in front of the mirror and
start the task of shaping yourself into a person
again. duct tape your pieces together and slowly
lose the ability to say anything at all.

tonight you can see venus from your bedroom
window. she’s the one shining the brightest.
she’s the only planet named
after a girl, you know, the queen of beauty
whose skin is made of volcanos.

boys are the kings of hell, sitting on their
thrones counting out pomegranate seeds.
boys wear the laurel wreaths of victory,
the last shreds of daphne’s free will.

this is not a poem.
this is a call for action.

my body is my own ocean.
my weeds are the only thing allowed to widen
the cracks of my sidewalks.
i am a patchwork of holes, honeycomb and fragile
enough to dissolve if you put me in water.
my heart pounds two times faster when a man
walks behind me and i have indents of car keys
on my palms. i cannot bring myself to think about
what i’ll name my daughter because i don’t want to bring
another girl into this world to get slaughtered
and have to keep on breathing, have to pull the knife
out of her chest and learn that it was her fault.

but then i imagine telling her that a day on
earth is 116 days on venus and that won’t make
her be able to shake hands with a man
without wondering how many of the whorls
on his fingers can be traced back to the crime scene of
a girl’s murdered innocence, and it won’t be able
to teach her how to look at a man and let him
see the fire in her eyes without trying to hide it.
it won’t give her the right to say no, it won’t let
anyone give her the right to say no, it won’t let her
know that she has that right anyway.

but it has to mean something. it has to.
it’s all we have left.