It shoots out like a ninja star,
like the time I talked to my aunt,
a landlord, about one of her renters—
a woman’s husband died
from drinking too much, this time
a bottle of rubbing alcohol,
somehow, the woman said,
into the light with her jaw wired
from behind a screen door. It flew
across the room
and stuck in the wall like a machete in a watermelon.
I got the feminist power fist tattoo
on my arm shortly after—
I said it was to remind myself to always
make feminist choices.
But, I didn’t always make feminist choices.
My models and their contradictions
hovered over a remote. I moved
out for a short while at sixteen, where I was raped
by a cruise worker visiting town.
But, I know the women in my life
have been raped, and for a moment there
the meander of men continued,
and if that confuses you,
you don’t know much about rape.
And now, I have to do all this
struggle and shame
even with the tattoo. How
can we go on like this?
I dove in and it’s nice. It’s there
because I need it, the work of diving—
just the work
over and over again.