Another woman goes missing during women’s history month
and they’re looking for her remains and
I can’t sleep thinking about how much of history we still haven’t dug up.
How much of the earth beneath our feet holds the bodies of nameless women,
how many men walk over their skeletons with hands washed clean of the dirt.
I can’t sleep thinking of how young I was when I learned my body was a form of currency that I'd always be in debt for, that one day I'd pay for with my life.
I can’t sleep thinking of how I don't want to make this about me, turn a very real woman into a tragedy,
but I’ve heard this story before, we’ve all heard these stories, told these stories, lived these stories. We’ve all got eulogies in the back of our throats. We’ve all got the edges of keys clutched between our fingers.
I can’t sleep thinking of how when I asked my male best friend to walk me home in the dark, he looked at me like I was a child, asked me what I was so afraid of.
As if living inside the body of a woman isn’t being trained to expect a break-in, isn’t being told that yes, you will be robbed and that that’s normal,
Even if it happens over and over again, you will just have to learn some ways to be safe and no, they won’t always work, but if they don’t it’ll be your fault, somehow.
Perhaps if you didn’t want to be robbed you shouldn’t own anything, which is to say perhaps you don’t own your body at all.
Perhaps your body is nothing but blood money, a deposit that allows you to exist in this world, eventually, you will have to pay it,
eventually, a man will come to collect,
I can't sleep thinking of all the times a man has told me I’ve owed him something and all the times he’s managed to take it.
I can’t sleep thinking of the time I ended up lost and drunk with a group of men, how one of them told me I owed him,
told me it was his friend’s birthday and he really fancied me, asked me if I’d fuck him too, laughed as he told me how his other friend had said to him she’s really drunk, isn’t she, meaning it’ll be easy, meaning I am the bread in a group of sworn winners, watch them put me between their teeth, watch them crush me down to sugar.
I can’t sleep thinking of it, all the times I too was almost turned to dust, the guilt that she was and I wasn't.
I can’t sleep thinking of the post that says WE ARE ALL HER, thinking of how she must’ve looked over her shoulder, how she must’ve clutched her keys, how she called her partner, how she must’ve spent most of her life imagining it as we all have wondering which picture they’ll choose, seeing a shadow and wondering if tonight will be our last, how we have all been the dead girl on news, even when it isn’t our name.