For Her

i am not the girl crying on the floor

after she felt the clasp of brutal fingers

digging into her bloodlined skin;

i am not a daughter curled up naked in bedsheets

hoping for her mother's touch to relieve the sting

of the one she just endured;

i am not a sister hoping that her brother

never finds out because he might go mad

like another man did that cold October night;

i am not the woman who felt the tainted rusted

lust to hold her thighs still with iron chains

lingering on his hot arid breath;

i am not the one bruised battered

and shivering, waiting for the next move

from a monstrous vicious brute;

i am the one who can let words come forth

like a ray of sun to heat

her chilled body;

to keep his hands from crowning her face

and body until she weeps something terrible

and makes good her promise to cry;

i am the one who can take her blood and her shame

and capture it in my verse

to spread to my brothers for our sisters.