Your frame
holds me down as I wake with you
on top of me,
having been let into
my locked house
by a concerned grandmother.
Your game
is a fucked up, fear based,
1995 ancient history lesson
which is now clinically insane.
Your name is Gene Warrick
and I met you in September 1994,
months before you raped me,
expecting this would cure me
of any doubts I had in your love for me.
There is no statute of limitations on pain,
no easy way to describe how I can forgive
but still fear you…
yet my words are just as true now
no matter how many years
it took me to say them.
His name is Gene Warrick
and if it bothers you that I’ve told you so
and you hold my rapist in such high regard
then follow his advice and stop struggling:
it will hurt less if you don’t struggle.
Written by Jason Wright
November 28, 2017
Inspired by Erica Mapp
This was not written as part of the #metoo movement, but in response to someone who believed that women choosing to speak up years after the fact were wrong to do so and that using their rapist’s names was offensive. I was so angered that I wrote this response and read it directly to her in front of a group of people that heard her express these views. I’ve been working for nearly 2 years on an essay about my experiences with rape; this is but one example.