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For so long we had prophesized in private,
getting high in bathrobes or crying in bathtubs,
doing anything to cleanse our minds
of what we knew we knew.
Walls fell and were built
and fell and were built again;
apocalypse was advertised every decade — but we called ruse
until the final plague.
An unsettling silence claimed the highways,
punctuated nightly by siren after siren
singing death and detention into our nightmares;
these two choices we were given.
A third option arose, unbeknownst to most: to live
so slowly you were moving backward through time.
On my knees, I tended beans and herbs;
I scrubbed the floors of dirt dragged in;
I crawled, infantile, seeing the
ground up close for the first time.
I curled up in grief and napped on earthen lap.
What if watching the birds really was our ticket out?
What if their calls were not more audible since our droning ceased,
but our sense of sound had in fact sharpened?
I pondered, polemic finally writing itself.
I threw open my doors to greet the spring breeze
and clear my private pandemic
and preach from pulpit not made for screen.
What Midas didn’t know was what Dionysus wouldn’t tell him:
there is such a thing as enough.

There was nothing domestic about the snarl that would
escape your gray mouth in the moment
before you pounced.
No house cat, no pet, could wound the way your wild fists would,
claws digging into underbellies and
fists slamming the prone backs of your prey.
We, the chased, never cowered; rather
we taunted you in a swift-footed death dance
on the nights you were bored
or sad, hungry or mad.
It was never clear why —
perhaps this is the circle of life, the way
justice is dealt in the animal kingdom.
You donned cape and crown and declared
yourself both rule maker and enforcer.
No marker of time really brings closure
when a stray kitchen clang is enough to knock
me back off my rocker.
You know the first rule of the fight club, after all.
I was always told silence speaks louder than words,
but with your hands around my neck
it’s not like I was given a real choice.
I don’t visit zoos anymore, as I’m too afraid
of the way the lions and tigers pace in impatience
on their side of the enclosure
as if anything could stop a creature
once he’s decided he wants to kill.

think plum. think me.
think deep purple, dark purple,
purple thin skin.
skin dark as twilight being pried from day’s hands,
slipping swiftly, sinking, slinking.
think puncturing teeth revealing
a fibrous, tendinous, sinewy red—
no, orange—no, pink. it’s a sunset!
it’s flesh.
it’s not just womb, no, it’s placenta.
it’s life in all its glory, it’s bearer of seed.
I am overripe.
I am clinging to my tree branch,
swinging in the wind.
but I am sweet and ready,
red and sweaty.

let’s have a fruit fight.
pluck those plums, pick those branches raw.
fill buckets and baskets until the purple blood flows,
flows into the grass and forms sticky residue on every finger,
every bare leg.
pick one up, yes, and throw it here.
now approach me. squeeze the plums into my hair,
allow their gore to slip down the neck of my shirt.
press one to my mouth and force me to bite.
don’t let me wipe.
no, let the blood run.
turn my white shirt wine.
let my forearms stick to yours as I graze these fruits
on your shoulders, scrub them down your arms.
stand there and let me press them onto your head.
don’t wipe the trickling juice as it drips down your brow.

we will assess the bloodbath once done.
all that wasted fruit, all that wasted sugary flesh,
all that broken skin.
but they were dead on arrival, dead as soon as we plucked them
from those trees.
this is violence for the sake of violence,
desecration of those deceased.
this is a thirst for blood, quenched.
this is sanguine satisfaction,
succulent sex.

There is a place I can’t be touched.
A place that has been signed, a place with tactile recognition that won’t let me forget a memory  I wish I didn’t have.

It’s two years later and I think I’m alright, now,
finally.
The nightmares have stopped and I no longer need therapy.
I’m in love, again, and it’s a Saturday night at his apartment.
We’re about to do what all love struck couples do on a Saturday night,
undress and undulate, digressing slowly from the conversation
until we are left speaking with limbs.
It starts off innocently and never gets a chance to progress.

His fingers slide from my hair down to my ears and come to rest
at the place.
Even with a touch so soft that it can’t be mistaken for anything but love,
his hands on my neck send me reeling.
It sends off sirens through my sympathetic nervous system.
It sets off an uncontrollable deluge of fright, of flashbacks of feeling like I was breathing my very last few breaths.
They say women survivors of abuse have higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than military personnel who have served in the Middle East.

And yes, I am shell shocked.
I am silenced once again against my will.
I am shaking like a seven-point-five on the Richter scale.
Using violence to silence those you want to oppress is the oldest war tactic in the book.
But violence was what taught me how to scream.
Violence is what taught me about love.
Violence was the cradle that rocked me to sleep every night from the age of ten until I was twenty-fucking-two.

So when I try to explain this to him,
when I tell him about the last time someone’s hands
were on my throat,
he holds me like I am a victim.
And I don’t know if that’s what I am.
I don’t know if I want to be called that.
I don’t know if that says something about me that
I don’t want to say.
Victims are vulnerable, they’re voiceless.
They’re visions of vicissitude dressed in rags holding an unwanted child on one hip, transformed from something desirable into “damaged goods.”
And that’s not what I want to be.

I am viscous, ebbing and flowing from one life lesson to the next.
I am vicious, loud and proud and ready to attack back.
I am victorious.
I am a vision.
I am valuable.