RAPE

There is no difference between being raped and being pushed down a flight of cement steps except that the wounds also bleed inside. There is no difference between being raped and being run over by a truck except that afterward men ask if you enjoyed it. There is no difference between being raped and being bit on the ankle by a rattlesnake except that people ask if your skirt was short and why you were out alone anyhow. There is no difference between being raped and going head first through a windshield except that afterward you are afraid not of cars but half the human race. The rapist is your boyfriend’s brother. He sits beside you in the movies eating popcorn. Rape fattens on the fantasies of the normal male like a maggot in garbage. Fear of rape is a cold wind blowing all of the time on a woman’s hunched back. Never to stroll alone on a sand road through pine woods, never to climb a trail across a bald without that aluminum in the mouth when I see a man climbing toward me. Never to open the door to a knock without that razor just grazing the throat. The fear of the dark side of hedges the back seat of the car, the empty house rattling keys like a snake’s warning. The fear of the smiling man in whose pocket is a knife. The fear of the serious man in whose fist is locked hatred. All it takes to cast a rapist to be able to see your body as jackhammer, as blowtorch, as adding-machine-gun. All it takes is hating that body your own, your self, your muscle that softens to flab. All it takes is to push what you hate, what you fear onto the soft alien flesh. To bucket out invincible as a tank armored with treads without senses to possess and punish in one act, to rip up pleasure, to murder those who dare live in the leafy flesh open to love.