A Woman Meets Her Rapist

What’s a woman to do
Years have gone by
The air of safety
Was beginning to cool her collar
Then suddenly
After marrying a gentle man
She’s randomly on line
At the local 7/11
When who is behind them
With a breath rhythm she will never forget
Her body taisered by his looming omnipresence.

She tried to tell her husband
Who is deeply contemplating
The pink or the blue Slurpee?
And the words just don’t come out
After her obvious nudging
Should she run, or blast out the message
(This is my assailant- the rapist
Who tortured me Mind, Body and Soul)
Well there might as well have been a harkening choir
As her devastation once again took place
In the most seemingly appearing calm and normalcy

So, she waits until he happily
Leaves the counter with the bright blue Slurpy-
Already decorating his beard and chin
Now she is almost embarrassed
For her rapist to think this is the caliber of man
Who might have protected her
Then she gets to the car
Remembering her initial fear
That if she told
Her father would kill him and go to jail.
She slowed down her intents
To rethink the potential replay demise

It is bewildering how those horrid thoughts
Attack in the middle of the night
The body remembers
And like a freight train
It comes speeding down the tracks
Before the brain can stop it.
The constant hypervigilence
That never lets the survivor rest
The world becomes a facade of niceties
Packaging up the every day Hell
Called Post traumatic Stress Disorder.

They are safely back in the car
They made it to the border
She quickly tells him
Like rolling tiny, pink candy balls
Floating off the tongue
And on to the motor cross
“He’s the one” she managed to shake out
Like talking through a clarinet reed
“the rapist, the guy who raped me!”
He finally put the disjointed words together
Then turned his head either feeling her anguish
Or his own shame for not having been there to protect her
Heroically, or ego sustainingly
He asks her “What do you want me to do?”
Why is he asking me this she thinks
Movie heart throbs, always know what to do, on their own.