wrecked, Atlanta burns, you know, metaphor, I’d rather talk
in metaphor than say the things he did, God made metaphor
for girls like me, you know, life is nasty, short, brutish, short,
you can be snuffed out, it’s so fast, so mean, so easy,
someone’s eyes go cold, they go mean, they say sit near me
and you say no and they say sit near me and you say no and
they say sit near me and you say no and it’s like a boy and a girl
and some courtly dance except he is saying you can leave, -a
death threat, you can leave, with his cold eyes gleaming a
devil’s yellow from the meanness o f it, a dirty yellow , as i f his
eyeballs changed from brown to some supernatural ochre and
he puts his hands on m y shoulders and his hands are strong and
he lifts me up from the single wood chair and there’s this kind
o f long waltz the length o f the great ballroom where his arms
are around me and I am going one, two, three, four, against
him, in the opposite direction from him trying to get past him
and he is using m y own motion to push me back to where he
wants and he sits me down on the single bed and w e just sit there
like chaste kids, teenagers, side by side, we each look straight
ahead except he’s got his hand on m y neck, w e’re Norm an
Rockw ell except his fingers are spread the width o f m y neck,
his fingers are around m y neck, circling m y neck and I turn my
head to face him, m y b ody’s staring outwards but I turn m y
face toward him and I say to him I don’t want to do this, I get
him to face me and I look him in the eye and I say I don’t want
to do this and his hand tightens on m y neck and I feel his
fingers down under m y skin and into the muscle o f m y neck
and he says quiet, totally level, totally calm: it doesn’t matter,
darling, it doesn’t matter at all. I’m thinking he means it
doesn’t matter to him to fuck and I smile in a kind o f gratitude
but it’s not what he means and he takes his other hand and he
puts it up at the neck o f m y T-shirt and he pulls, one hand’s
holding m y neck from behind and the other’s pulling o ff my
T-shirt, pulling it half off, ripping it, it burns against m y skin
like whiplash, and he pushes me down on the bed and I see m y
breast, it’s beautiful and perfect and kind o f cascading, there’s
no drawing can show how it’s a living part o f me, human, and
when he puts his mouth on it I cry, not so he can tell, inside I’m
turned to tears, I see his face now up against m y breast, he’s
suckling and I hate him, I feel the inside o f his mouth, clam my
and toothy and gum m y, the cavity o f his mouth and the sharp
porcelain o f his teeth, there’s the edge o f his teeth on my
nipple, and he’s got my underpants torn o ff me and m y legs
pushed up and spread and he’s in me and I think I will count to
a hundred and it will be over but it isn’t, he’s different, I try to
