Your Rapist Trends on Twitter

by Danielle Shorr


 
And jokes flood the feed.
There, his face, and then his name,
and then his face again, and then yours
in the bathroom mirror after he is finished,
behind a closed door, you can鈥檛 remember 
if you locked it, memory the only witness, 
memory unreliable, his voice from the bed 
singing, a permanent song of summer, you 
remember this, remember more than memory 
wants, you wipe him off your face, you cannot 
get clean, he laughed as he did it, like he was 
telling a joke, your body the punchline, he smokes 
a cigarette before he leaves and you watch him,
then shower once, then again, call a friend, go 
to bed, not to sleep, always to bed and not to sleep, 
always on your phone, the phone a distraction, 
the phone now a reminder, your safe space 
corrupted, you are seventeen again, combing 
his cum out of your hair, you are twenty one again, 
apologizing to your boyfriend for crying at his misfire, 
you do not know why you are crying, he does, 
he remembers what you told him, what you told 
him and what you want to tell Twitter, tell the world, 
tell your mother, this is the man behind the haunting, 
the poems, the unnamed, this the reason you yell-cried 
when nobody in your family believed Christine Blasey Ford, 
this is the reason and you want to turn off 
your phone and say nothing, stay on your phone 
and say everything, flood the timeline, the streets, 
the bylines, you want the jokes to become else, 
become your pain, become a girl too young 
for a man in his twenties, become another meal 
for public doubt, there are too many questions 
not worth answering, not worth your sanity, so 
you scroll, say nothing, put the phone down, 
go to bed but not to sleep

About the Author

Danielle (she/her) is an MFA alum and professor of disability/queer rhetoric at Chapman University. She has a fear of commitment in regard to novel writing and an affinity for wiener dogs. Her work has been published by Lunch Ticket, Vassar Review, Hobart, Split Lip, The Florida Review, etc. and is forthcoming in The New Orleans Review.