#rape mention for ts

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

Chessy Normile, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party (Copper Canyon Press, 2020)

A lot of men in the books I read
are supposedly still alive.
I wonder if they’re still afraid.

Right now, in the school library,
holding my place in a book
on The Secret Art of Alchemy,
nobody’s raping me. Superb!

The book says if you achieved
THE TRIPLE CROWN OF ENLIGHTENMENT
then you were inducted into
THE BROTHERHOOD OF LIGHT,
which means you are still alive today.

Maybe you’re in this library with Ally and me.
Maybe you’re standing outside it. Either way,
you’re experiencing your crown. Do I hate you?

The most divine secrets
were never written down.

For instance, the Druids were,
I’m pretty sure, wizards,
and this alchemical stuff’s the same—
we used to keep what was precious private.

That’s how it ought to be:
that our secrets light us up,
that we spit the rest out.

____________
____________
____________

Soon!
Someday, so soon,
I will do it.

I’ll say your name out loud.

Chessy Normile, Great Exodus, Great Wall, Great Party (Copper Canyon Press, 2020)