“Since then I’ve always thought that under rape in the dictionary it should tell the truth. It is not just forcible intercourse; rape means to inhabit and destroy everything.” Alice Sebold – ‘Lucky’

His-story is a global disease that feeds on privacy.
Coercion conspires to secrecy
in collective denial of internal dis-ease.
I have relived the horror and the agony over and over.
You have to be brave to be a woman.

It was not because I could not face another night of hell
at the mercy of a mind that plays back its old scenes, again and again
even resorting to the subterfuge of tortuous dreams,
that continued long after, to torment my every waking moment.

starless
the depth of night
in the pond

It was not because of a brief news item
about a schoolgirl who was raped,
whose parents decided not to press charges. Pity her,
for…