& Rape

What I see when I look at the ampersand.

I. 

When I think of you,
I think of sex,
two naked bodies.
Twisted
legs flexed,
like rigid vines about a tree.

My seething mind conjures
arms crossed—
a mother,
an infant at her teat.
Their sighs collide;
they breathe in one space.
In a white world
there is nothing
but the two.


II.

Again I see rape.
Pot-bellied man who hides
inside a young girl.
Palms that asphyxiate.
The pressure on her throat.
Crack—
on the ground, she’s dead,
arms straight as pins.
It reminds him of Jesus Christ.

I see intricate lace,
a woman’s throat.
It’s broken where he held her.
Fiber and bone
sticks up like static flailing,
as if they could drown.


III.

She’s a girl again,
a child at mother’s breast,
this time it shakes;
she hardly seems to breathe.
She’s gone back to coldness—
like the growing seed inside her,
who is yet to be flesh.
She is yet to become soul.

You remind me of sex,
of its love and of its hate.
You honest being,
you simple scroll,
how could you speak of rape?

Author's Note

Inspired by the ampersand symbol (&).