Caitlyn Alario
I WANT TO TELL YOU MY ABUSER’S NAME
i want to tell you where she works,
what town she lives in. i want to tell you
her mother’s name, her father’s name,
the names of her siblings, the names
of her best friends, the street she lived on,
the name of her first dog. i want to tell you
about her college boyfriend, what he called her
in bed. i want to tell you every job she’s ever held,
the brand of coffee she preferred, how she liked
her eggs. i want to tell you her favorite lunch spot,
the cafes she frequented, the meals she liked to make.
i want to tell you what perfume she wore. i want to tell
you what color she painted her toenails. i want to tell you
the medications she was on, what she told her therapist,
her diagnoses. i want to tell you her favorite bible verses,
her favorite hymns, her favorite books, her favorite movies.
i want to tell you the songs she said were about me, the stories
she said were about us. i want to tell you what it was she really wanted.
i want to tell you the life she planned for us. i want to tell you the name
of the man she chose for me, the names of our future babies, the color
of their hair. i want to tell you the names she gave to my breasts. i want to
tell you the words she used to describe them. i want to tell you the names
of the other girls, the ones i knew about, who didn’t want to remember.
Curse
one boy my abuser hated more than the rest.
i met him at the end of a long hallway.
i was wearing a shirt with his name on it.
mostly i remember
the beginning: a sense i had that first afternoon
something important had happened. the next day,
he came by my house, waited in the doorway
to see me. i can
still see him now: backlit in a red polo,
ray-bans colluding with his hair & the light
to create a kind of halo. please, just for
a few lines, let me
hold him here at the threshold. suspend us
in some other story—a feel-good rom-com,
coming of age, the type of movie that can
only end one way.
keep the conflict teenage, harmless. don’t let me
tell my abuser about him. give her dolls,
facsimiles, eidolons to play with—
wax bodies easy
to manipulate into whatever shapes
she chooses. for now, let’s stay in the doorway
where a boy smiles at me & a thread unfurls
unfettered between
us. see how it unspools below our sight line.
watch it slack & taut as he rocks on his feet.
let’s leave them to their small talk & shy glances.
let’s let them begin.
FOR YOUR THOUGHTS
she hadn’t spoken
to me all night.
heat blasted
from the dashboard,
her too-sweet
perfume filling
the psychic space
between our heads.
all night she wouldn’t
look at me, wouldn’t
smile in my direction.
the force of her inattention
altered gravity
around me—i’d
become repulsive
& watched the evening
from the ceiling,
watched her laugh &
talk & eat with anyone
who wasn’t me.
in the car, she said penny
& my skull became
a piggybank
she was rattling
upside down.
it didn’t matter
what currency
she found—she needed
a reason to be angry
& she’d take whatever
jingled out.
she said i had to choose:
her or the boy i loved—
an opening thin
& tantalizing
as a coin slot
shining light
against the wall
of a cave. i wanted
to press myself
against it—the other
copper side, a bright
one with a man’s face,
high cheekbones, strong
jaw—an emancipator.
say it mattered
when i chose him.
say i unbuckled
& left the car. say
i walked inside &
found a way
to tell my parents
& they reported her
to the school, the campus
pastor. say—imagine—
she was fired
out of fear of bad press
or a lawsuit. where
could i have gone
that she wouldn’t again
find me? how could
she have shaken me
out of her head?