Tell

It’s 3:00 am, and your eyes search the ceiling, looking for answers. 

Outside the world is sleeping, you know he is sleeping. 

Like a dog with a bone, your sleepless mind worries all around it: 

What if he had never been there?  What if you had just stayed home?

No matter, it always comes out the same.  You cannot change the ending.

The face in your mirror does not smile anymore.  Shards of splintered confidence cut from the inside, every time you try. 

You cannot hide from this, no matter how fast you run. 

Don’t make a scene, it was nothing, you were drunk, stuff happens.  Toss it off, like a jello-shot, like a bump in the road. 

Maybe it wasn’t even rape.

Twist it, turn it, try to make it different.  Still, it always comes out the same.

Good girls, quiet polite girls, biddable girls do as they are told.  They do not scream inside and vomit their lunch.

You’re not OK, you know you know it.  This is your chance.  Don’t blow it.

Tell.  It sounds impossible, but Tell.

Find your most trusted, close your eyes if you must, and let it go, let it go, the tears, the sadness, the rage.  Let it go. 

Tell.

Strong hands will reach up to catch you, you will not fall.

You are one of many, so so many, sisters and yes brothers, too.

You are not paralyzed, victimid

You are not blighted, split and ruined

you are not spoiled goods

you are not anything other than who you were before –

but you have been forged unwilling in this fire,

blue-white strong as tungsten steel, and

you will rise up, whole in the truth that rolls like God’s thunder, and

you will raise your voice, you will speak his name, and

you will Tell.