What They Don't Tell You

That after you peel your skin from the sofa
or tongue-wet sheets or ketchup-stained back seats
of their family’s minivan upholstery that holds infinite tears,
your fingerprints will wash away come spring rain
while you wait for it to happen again.

They don’t tell you—
God, no one tells you, do they?
Once he tore your underwear
from your body and shoved
it so far down into your throat,
blooming fabric and blood into your lungs
that years later you still hiccup
your virginity, heartburning your chest.

You can’t scream, can’t testify into oblivion
what happened whenever you open your mouth.
The truth doesn’t bubble out
because your lungs are still asphyxiating,
still chewing on the mangled fringes of
your once–favorite blue calla lily underwear.

They don’t tell you that you wait.
Every day you wake and wonder
if you will have to strip your skin
from the rust-colored bricks in an alleyway
on your way home from work.
That someone will notice what feels
like invisible tattoos on your face,
your wholly holy flesh, stolen for sacrifice,
and they will want to taste your suffering too.

They don’t tell you that you wait to be violated,
again—that a part of you says it happened once,
so it must happen again and even darker still—
how horrible it will be if it doesn’t.
Because you never stop waiting,
fearing that second time.

They don’t tell you that you will join
a forest of trees shaped like memory that sturdied
themselves against hurricane winds,
who beseeched mother Mary for deliverance
from a force of nature that split your trunks
and wilted your growth.

They don’t tell you
that after you will know.
You will see that look, that pause,
when measures of truth escape—
a code only for the initiated
of the loneliest and most populated club
no one signs up for.
That they know how it feels.
You offer them a hug,
a squeeze of hands together
as if to say—Me Too.

Kate Koenig is a queer writer and photographer living in Houston, TX. She is a recent MFA graduate of Creative Writing from The New School. She earned her BA in English and History at the University of Pittsburgh. Her work has either appeared or is forthcoming in Sunspot Literary Journal, Barren Magazine, La Piccioletta Barca, Sazeracs, Smoky Ink, and elsewhere. She is currently querying her YA manuscript, Stigmata. Find her on Twitter here: twitter.com/KateK_Writing