A 400 WORD DISSERTATION ON VIOLENT MEN

by
KRISTEN KOSMAS

_______________

 

I am body, but nobody
Body but nobody, understand?
Because I don't want your sweat and your spit all over my imagination
When I'm alone I pray to god to find me and take me away,
Take away the inviting smell of woman
Eyes of woman, ears mouth vagina
Holes that anyone's fingers or tongue can fit into,
Fill up for an hour or an evening
But tomorrow or at 3 in the morning when all of him is limp and full of dreams of his mother,
I am empty, full of holes, getting bigger and bigger every time you put your finger in and I am getting smaller and smaller
Body but nobody, understand?
Holes imply,
A hole practically begs to be filled,
And my head is a hole full of thoughts,
Unspeakable thoughts of violence against you,
Thoughts of revolution,
If my holes were revolution they would fill themselves and overflow and the unspeakable from every hole would drown you
I lie there, full of holes wanting to disappear
I want to be empty
Holes want to be empty
I want to be hollow, understand?
Somebody with no body
We are the hollow women
The stuffed women
Stuffed with fists and feet and fingers and shit and lies and stuffed with you
We are the hollow women
But forget it
Forget it
We learned to forget it from our mothers
We will forget the girl who was chained to a bed or a toilet all her life,
Who never learned to speak the language
We will forget the girl who was stuffed into a box under a bed he slept in with his wife
Shitting herself, pissing herself
Until he would come to clean her
To feed her
To rape her
When they finally found her,
She'd forgotten her own name
But I can't forget that when my cousin was raped
Her head three times the size of her head
Her mouth so disfigured she couldn't speak even though she knew and remembered how
Her head, her whole body black and beat to shit and oozing
Oozing purple and red and yellow from holes I didn't know oozed yellow
From holes she didn’t have the last time I saw her
I can't forget that they told me "Don't cry when you look at her"
"Don't cry when you look at her"