the ache /
it was unnoticeable to everyone in the room /
moving forward is excavating, often painfully, what
has gone before / i show up, do the work, keep my head down /
it just knifed me, i was gutted / grief consumes / grief for
the broken
young woman i had been before and during /
a time when i was less jaded, when i believed i could do anything /
i just want this to be over: /
the false narrative that my mouth was
merely a receptacle for some powerful man’s desire /
her restrained performance /
his reason: “because i could” /
just keep grinning /
society is like a greek chorus, also has a say in this /
“victim” / or “scandal” /it was such a raw exposure /
the person at the epicenter of the experience doesn’t necessarily
get to decide / i was completely at his mercy in that way / it was
just like a whole other layer of being burned /
makeup fixed the bruises / fix this little hole and then
everything will be fine/ i don’t want you to be the most notable thing
that happened to me / i don’t want you to be the question i get asked
in interviews for the rest of my life /
if you want to know what power looks like, watch a man safely,
even smugly, do interviews for decades without ever worrying
whether he will be asked questions he doesn’t want to answer /
i just want this to be over / it doesn’t work that way.
"All italicized lines are direct quotes of Gina Cazador's, pulled from the season five of BoJack Horseman. All un-italicized text is directly quoted from Monica Lewinsky's 2018 interview with Vanity Fair Magazine “Who Gets to Live in Victimville?"
M/Em Amory (they/them) is, like glitter, an intangible light effect made physical, mostly plastic, and often from New Jersey. Their work has recently been published with Ink & Nebula and Crooked Arrow Press, among others. They can be found on twitter @queerparalethal or instagram @paralethalleftist or, in real life, under a pile of blankets watching The People v. O.J. Simpson again with their two cats, both scorpios.