An open letter to my rapist

Bushra's birthday. 2018. She secured the whole of Fiction for her birthday party. I was there with a few friends and one of my lovers, watching the sunset from the Long Street balcony. Liquor flowed. We were dancing and dancing and there was your girlfriend on the dancefloor. Let's call her Dainah. I'm bi. She's bi. She had this huge halo of hair and we danced together. We kissed. It got saucy. At some point you joined us, tried to dance with us. I wasn't interested. She wasn't either. We ignored you made it clear you  weren't wanted there. You backed off. We made out some more and agreed that we should take it to the bathroom.

She pulled me by my hand into the women's bathroom. We were in the stall kissing. I thought you had backed off but I was wrong. You followed suit. You joined us in the bathroom. Who invited you? How did you know we were going to the bathroom together in drunken lust if you were not on the other side of the dancefloor preying after we rejected you the first time?

In the stall we were making out and you were there inconsequential. Watching, hands wandering uninvited. It's like you didn't exist. You didn't exist. I don't even remember how or when but it happened. BUT YOU FELT YOU HAD THE RIGHT TO BE A PART OF WHAT WE WERE DOING. Two queer women having fun and you felt you had a right to that pleasure. I don't care if she was your girlfriend or not. You didn't have the right to be there. Uninvited. 

It all happened so fast. I was drunk and confused and before I knew it you were behind me and had my pants down and penetrated me without protection and without my permission. It was so quick. I don't know what happened afterwards, I think she tried to stop you.  I don't remember much but I remember how I felt. The terror.

I couldn't make sense of it. The next few days I tried to construct a narrative that it could have been a threesome. But I didn't sign up for that. I didn't give you consent at any point. Now, two and a half years later, I know what it was, though. Plain and simple: rape. 

You two are still together. You have a kid. You probably didn't think twice about what happened that night. You thought you were entitled. You probably thought because I gave her my consent it automatically extended to you as her partner. You are wrong. You raped me that night and I need you to know that. 

I don't care how much you meant well, you are a rapist. You penetrated me and violated me without my consent without invitation and without protection. I hope you read this and it sinks into your conscience that you took something from me that day and that I had to suppress the trauma for two and a half years before it surfaced. 

I could give you a lesson in consent but I won't. All I hope is that you read this. And to Dainah I hope you know that you are married to a rapist. 

The Goddess

You hear their voices in the dead 

of night and retreat. Original 

sin so ingrained, you drown 

out their wisdom.

Sunken into the marrow of

your bones is their message.

Equally important, but

invariably unique. 

You close your eyes.

Drift into deepest 

consciousness. 

Eve's curiosity engulfs as 

you, yes you, bite into the

forbidden apple of a life

fully lived. 

Then, Ishtaar's fullness

surrounds you:

An existence pregnant

with joy. Rotund and

exuberant. Free and 

full.

This is only matched by Isis'

magic hand: healing,

tending, protecting. 

Growing and gifting. 

You feel Oshun's abundance.

You clench your thighs.

It lives in your hips:

sultry, sensual, sensory,

sensitive.

For the first time, you allow

yourself to feel that might.

A power that only Vashti's

resilience to resist to man

can balance. 

Man. Men. Who for millenia 

denegrated the Goddess 

(you).

Forgetful that if crossed,

you are both Kali and Medusa

- ash black and serpentine,

ready to strike. 

You remember that you can

cast flesh to stoney

death. And like Lilith, 

realise that you will not 

serve or subserve, but only

preserve (yourself).

Seraphic Sage

There is this feeling...

You know it well. The

hairs on your arms rise

one by one - like an ovation - 

and breathe a whisper 

down your back.

Your heart opens, in 

that moment it blooms.

You are one with 

the universe.

For an instant, all 

of existence is in 

sync with your psyche. 

Shhhh...

Don't think. Feel. You 

know it, as deeply, 

earnestly and truly 

as you know your 

own name. 

Like the creases of your

limbs, the prints on your

fingers: serenity is a part

of your seraphic essence. 

You, my dear, are holy. 

Ingest this, and remember:

The power that breathes you, 

will never leave you. 

Garden Heart

My morning meditation is a walk

through the garden of my heart 

as I ask the universe to show me 

her:

      The Divine Feminine. 

I construct, deconstruct and re-

construct through my thoughts 

and actions the idea of the wild -

woman.

Unkowingly, she comes to me. 

Increasingly, I see her in every

woman I meet. 

She is embedded in me.

I hear her in my mother's cackle, 

that's become my cackle, 

that's become my friends',

my sisters', my child's.

Wrestling with the present.

Sitting in it. Letting my 

intuition rise up like a flame

to warm and illuminate

the crevices in my chest. 

I pause. I feel joy. I think:

This can't possibly be 

reserved for me, for us,

for women. 

Then, like fog rising in the 

morning sun it dawns on me:

The divine feminine is 

in us all. She tends and observes

and is simply waiting for

us to give her a call. 

John Smith

What of this obsession with the colonizer?

I jog my memory, I run the hard-drive of 

my mind. My dad's voice ringing in my 

six year old ears: Call her Safia so that

her name is not a tongue-twister. 

Twisting whose tongue? Do I twist

their tongues now? Titillating, 

tempting, triumphant, truce. 

Sadistic seething. Sinister 

satisfaction. 

Desire me so that I can learn 

to love myself. No. Lay your

hands on me so that this emptiness 

is filled with something close

to the feeling of 

an existence. 

Wait. 

Think about that. Without the 

affirmation of your gaze, lust, 

eyes on my soul shifting face 

fleeting floating. I am stuck 

somewhere between the void 

and nothing.

Now tell me that colonization

brought boons? My bones

bereft of belonging.

Or maybe it is about possession

of power? For me. Pretty plight

pleaing to prey.

Freddie Prinz Junior

Let me tell you a story that makes my heart
    beat with intention.
Okay, I lied. I don't even know
                     if my heart beats anymore.
I actually think that it's drowning  -
          in the sludge of shame. I know that it
longs, though and I know that it feels.

I hear the crackling of the fire
   and remember the time I almost burned
the house down - alone in it. An involuntary
  suicide.
               Irony in the face of all those bottles of
                   pills.

Relief.
My belly sits on my thighs.
          The monk, she told me to relax it.
                                                          Let it hang.
           Breathe in and
                                                        let it expand.
           Breathe out and
                                                       let it contract.

How does that
          make you feel?
                                   You fatphobic fuck!
See, that's funny
         because it's usually:           fat fuck.
There is power in turning the words around.
There is power in words.

I'd be lying if I said I wasn't somewhat fond
        of the pain. I mean, my joy was stolen from me
the day I pulled the Freddie Prinz Junior poster
                                                         out of my locker.

Smothered by vacuous righteousness.
                      And the false promise of belonging. 

The Cox Phenomenon

Here it is again. The gallows of woman-
   hood - the debilitation which validates
the condition.

Someone tell me; does living through
  a pandemic give you license to breathe,
in the midst of those who cannot?

Or shall I shift the gearstick into neutral
  and roll into a pasture?

Maybe you'll drown with me at the bottom
  of the lake?

Like the time I read
       that we have just three minutes to live
but every time we breathe it resets the clock.

Wrap your head around such a fragile
    existence. And contrast it with the
woman born limbless
                                   who flies planes.