This is how it happened to me the second time
Friends
No red flags
Known quantities
No textbook examples
No black hat
No history of violence
No weapons
No fists
No marks
No DNA
Crime done but no police report to write
Because without the bruises
Blood
Semen
There is nothing to write down and present to the police, to a courtroom
I can only say that it happened
I was violated
You took without asking and when I pushed you away
Jumped back from you (from it) as if you were the temperature of lava,
You laughed without seeing the horror filling my eyes
When I asked if that had really just happened,
More laughter
As if you couldn’t imagine anything wrong with what you’d just done
And even though I stopped you,
I couldn’t move
I let you put your arms around me and pretend you could make it okay
I had to explain why it was wrong
When all I wanted was to pour my rage over you like hot coals
I had to listen to you making effusive hollow paper thin apologies
That clung to me like the physical memory of the feeling of you taking without asking
My brain was replaying the pressure and the push and I just wanted you and all your words, breath, sound, smell off of me
I wanted to burn myself clean of everything about you
I didn’t understand why I never saw it coming
I didn’t understand why I hadn’t hurt you, hit you, kicked you, clawed at your eyes
I keep a blade and tear gas on me and I never used them on you when I had every right to
I wanted to tell everyone, but I had nothing to show them that would prove that it happened
So I told people who believed me, who asked me if I wanted to go to the police
But I had nothing but my word
Sometimes I wish I’d done more
Maybe there would’ve been epithelial cells for them to swab and capture
After all, that’s who I am, right?
I speak out, I advocate, I fight, I do the right thing, collect physical evidence and documentation of harm done so justice can be done
But what is justice when there is no physical proof of the crime?
Only a few people are going to truly understand and believe what happen,
I don’t have to be beaten or bloodied or have male DNA collected from body to make what happened count as violence against my body