#assault mention for ts

LIVE

I wrote a joke on the bathroom mirror in toothpaste.
It was about how there were four combs on the sink,
which I think is a remarkably high number of combs.
Who were you brushing?? I wrote
and drew a fictional animal with long hair.
My roommates came home and it was like christmas for me,
very proud of myself, lying in wait under the covers, listening.
I heard the mean one, Simon, tell his girlfriend,
There’s a snide note in there
about too much hair in the sink,
which was an incorrect reading of my joke.
This caused in me a panic so acute I fainted.
Luckily I was in bed already,
so this was not so different from falling asleep,
except for one potentially noteworthy difference,
which was I dreamt all night
that the men who’ve attacked me in this life (and will ever later)
were swimming through dark, thick water
towards my sleeping body.
I couldn’t move because my body was asleep and
I couldn’t hide because my body was glowing,
like a white ember/ridge of maggot/sliver of soap.
I could not turn
the damned light off!
The water glowed ’round me where I touched it.
Because of the glowing
I saw it was red,
thought,maybe this is not water…
thought,THIS IS BLOOD I AM SWIMMING IN,
and remembered
the time I drove to Washington, DC
with a girl named Carly who liked to lucid dream
and how in the car Carly told me she had met a shaman once
and that that shaman told her,
In a nightmare, Carly, if you are being chased,
turn around and walk right back towards the thing that is chasing you.
Only one of three things can happen: it will disappear,
it will change into something else, or you will wake up.
When I woke up
I was staring in the mirror,
looking at myself
through the toothpaste message.
Who were you brushing?? the mirror asked.
I reached out and began to smudge brushing??
until all it said was Who were you