My body is a war zone
Fields of devastation
Left on her barren plains
Bombs and rockets 
have exploded here.
I pick up the shattered pieces
And try to 
Put them back together
With tears
That will not come
Shaking and numb 
I make my way 
Across the battle ground
The used condoms
He tossed aside
For me to clear up
He derides
Yells at me
To pick up his clothes
“Pick up my pants!” He shouts
I bend down 
I acquiesce 
In silence
I do what he says

Am I broken?
I don’t know yet
he told me
“Sex is the test”
If there is 
No connection.
I failed
I showed emotion,
Only distress.
He complained
He saw
Sadness in my eye
I could not 
Pretend pleasure
Not even
For him
For this
My screams
Put him off 
His climax
His stroke 
Kept going
Hard
Like
ice 
Concrete
Fire
..
Blood 
no blood
Robotic 
Fear
Breath 
in me
Quiet
Rising
Stifled
Cries
I could not
Struggle
Move
Not
My hips
My arms
I was stilled
To a silent 
Stupid
Stunned rabbit.
Stupid
Contortion
Stupid
Heart beat
Stupid
Stupid
Me

These are
Some of 
The feelings
Irrelevant
To the man 
Who rang me
Early morning
From the police

I’m not interested
In your feelings
He shouts
I’m not saying
I disbelieve you
He says
What is there
To disbelieve?
What is there
Left of me?

When I can
Still breathe
When my 
Chest
Has stopped
Seizing
When I have
Woken still
On the floor
Because
Once more
I could not 
Face
The bed

Then
When,
Then 
You can
Judge me
wanting.
I could not..
I failed

D’you want us
To investigate?!
He yells
Crack of dawn
Me, broken
Again
Are you 
going 
to co-operate?!
He interrogates
My broken body
My broken sobs
“Yes”
I say

No
 
“No,” is not a word
These men
Like this 
Can take
Yes,
No 
It’s the same
To them

No! a stifled scream
Woman
Held within,
Crushed
Like my music
That stopped.
Like the blood
That ceased 
Flowing
From my womb
That day,
The day
He 
invaded
My everything
With his hard
Calloused being

Determined
His
Hard
His erection
That did not
Care for
My feeling
My pain
My screams
on repeat
Like a rhythm
My fear,
His aphrodisiac

My fear
My stillness
My quaking,
His opportunity 

He laughs at 
My terror
My horror
My sickness 
My devastate.
My room
That swims
Before his
Realisation 
Of Sudden fun
In all this 
Premeditation
Now 
Protection off,
Protection gone
The chance  
To force pregnancy
against
Everything
I believe

Now
He knows 
he truly
discovered
The essence
Of me

“I’d better not 
intimidate you”
He’d said
Yesterday, 
My timidity
A station
Where he could park
His things
His anger
His directions
His misogyny
His pornographic dream

Control,
Demands.
Blindness
To my rising despair

He vents 
His demons
Hatred
He tried
To bury them
Deep inside me
As he could squeeze..
Intimate
As could be

We cannot compare it
To the personal trauma
That rages through veins
Pistol fire across my boundaries 
What he did
Broke me apart  
The pieces of shattered me
Cracked open
For everyone to see
Everywhere I turn
the perpetrator’s friends
What’s next? Public humiliation? 
Men like him
Are judge and jury

No locks changed
No alarms 
Can make me feel safe
He may come back again one day
The depth of this fear
I cannot explain.. 

Afterwards
he wrote me
a letter which says
“I felt I was
abandoning
you to a fate
Worse than death” 
Like a prophecy
A hex 

Try talking therapy, they say
Are you joking?
As if I didn’t do that anyway
A prison 
I cannot escape
While he
Walks free
Every day
From this  war crime

I, still being tried
Still justifying
Still unable
To adequately explain
To fully comprehend

©GS
3 April 2017

They say rape is used as a weapon of war. I want to acknowledge that sexual violence is a very real war on women and girls in world wide culture, right here and now. And of course on the men and boys who have also been subjected to this dreadful act. We hear you too. To understand that this crime takes your soul and rearranges it into little shattered pieces. It takes your sexuality and drives a dagger through it. It takes your self esteem and screws it up and throws it away. It takes your former life and throws it out of the window. If you are still standing, sitting or even lying down and still breathing after that, you are a true survivor. Even if you think no one hears you, I hear you. Other survivors hear you. reach out and try to find. Never give up. People love you Xxx ©GS

Rain.org US rape crisis .800.656.4673
UK National rape crisis 0808 802 9999
Contact your sexual assault referral centre
SARC (or London Haven)
http://www.facebook.com/girlsurvivor

Photo with thanks to Christopher Campbell
#RapeSurvivor #MyBody #Myvoice #MyBodyisAWarZone #WeBelieveHer #WomensLivesMatter