Trigger Warning: DV and SA
April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. For weeks, I’ve watched others speak out about their experiences, and I was inspired to write a poem about some of my own. I was a teenager in the late ’80s and early ’90s. A time when fending off sexual assault was just “boys being boys.” I could write a book on all the stories that I now recognize as deeply abusive. Instead, I’ll share this poem that sums up the worst offender, someone who spent years lurking in the shadows, gradually breaking me down.
This isn’t about him though. It’s about me being able to talk about significant events in my life without shame.
Speak Truth
When I was 10, I thought the world of you.
An older boy who deigned to treat me well.
At age 13, we kissed. You said, “Don’t tell.”
At age 14, you would not take my “No.”
You used your size. You threw your weight around.
It got you off to pin me to the ground.
You did not care that I’d picked someone else.
When he spoke up, you hurt him as a game.
You said I only had myself to blame.
You spoke of fate and what was meant to be.
You said I made you feel the way you felt.
You stacked the deck with all the cards you dealt.
In time, I came around. I let you in.
Two lives I led, or maybe even more.
Did it feel good? To make me know the score.
At age 16, my license made me brave.
It brought a sense of running my own show.
I pulled away. You would not let me go.
One night, you knocked and begged with bleeding fists.
And even though I knew it was a trick,
Your pleas for help… I heard the lock unclick…
It’s fractured in my mind… It was so quick…
But replays haunt and hit me like a brick…
And after that… Your reasoning made me sick.
You had no choice. Rejection made you mad.
I’d hurt your heart and backed you to a wall.
My “No,” you’d claimed, was what had caused it all.
These days, in my real life, you don’t exist.
And yet you’ve still popped up uncannily,
Like when you tried to friend my family.
And then, you had the gall to just… show up.
I can’t explain why you would think it’s right
To comment on my post one random night.
Decades had passed, and still you pulled that stunt.
And how did I respond? With just a block.
Ignoring you seemed best, despite my shock.
I did not tell you off as I desired.
I did not share my scars or what I’ve lost.
The ways my sense of self has paid your cost.
I’ve kept it in for fear that you’d return.
You’d twist my words and try to get back in.
Defend yourself, play games, give truth your spin.
But now I need to stand up for that girl.
That younger me who wanted to be loved.
The one who froze in fear when she was shoved.
You need to know that you are dead to me.
Reach out again and I’ll avenge my youth.
I’m strong like steel, and now I speak my truth.
If you have experienced sexual assault, you are not alone. You can find help through RAINN’s confidential 24/7 National Sexual Assault Hotline. You do not have to carry the pain on your own, and you do not have to protect your abuser with your silence.