SHOUT(20)

which made me laugh, we clapped and cheered for Kimberly

because she wrote a great book, too, then Walter poured me a glass of wine first one of the evening but not the last we toasted each other we celebrated writing for the kids the world doesn’t want to see earlier, when the student journalists interviewed us

one commented about the friendly vibe of the Fab Five Finalists, asked “Aren’t you supposed to be competitors?”

Walter took the mic and smiled “No,” he said. “Not competitors.

We’re coconspirators, and we like it that way.”

That was when I knew I was home.





tsunami




tens of thousands speak words ruffling the surface of the sea into whitecaps, they whisper into the shoulder of my sweater they mail

tweet, cry

direct-message

hand me notes

folded into shards

when no one is watching sharing memories and befuddlement broken dreams and sorrow they struggle in the middle of the ocean, storms battering grabbing for sliced life jackets driftwood

flotsam and jetsam from downed unfound planes, sunken ships and other disasters if they can keep their heads up they swim for the nearby Melindas

to help them save

themselves from drowning in that hungry sea of despair as they lift up their sisters and brothers

and those who claim their space beyond old definitions they tell their stories and speak their truth earthquakes in deep water send ripples to the surface that crave the shore thundering

toward land, sounding like a freight train the fatetrain, monsooning, pulls back the shallows exposing the bones of ocean messages in bottles tossed overboard Hw?t!

the chorus swells the tidal wave tsunamis overcoming gravity knocking down the doors





blowing up




girls and boys tell me, shame-smoked raw voices, tears waterfalling, about the time

IT forced its dick

into her mouth

or his mouth

or their mouth

stopped up the breathing scared shut the screams the mouth they want to eat with, smile

with, sing with, paint with glitter, lip—

stick, and stain

with grape popsicles or wine from a dark sea, a mouth to whisper with love, to open wide and swallow

what love offers, hungry always for more.

Apologetically bile-gagged, they tell me

they know they should feel grateful

because they weren’t . . . . . . . .

. . . . . .

. . . . . . . . should feel grateful

because they weren’t . . . . . . .

“raped”

and they set the word “raped”

between quotation marks “ ”

feeling somehow wrong about admitting their pain knowing that others

hurt differently

I wasn’t “raped”

locking the word

into a cage

“ ”

filled with legal definitions, a cage built on quicksand a shame-forged prison of self-doubt those marks jail

their truth

behind a false narrative, an unholy competition that no one wants to play.

Let the lawyers keep score, if you must

let the court tally the points for conviction or against for six months in the county lockup six years in the federal pen Pain won’t be contained by bars or marks

your scars deserve attention, too.





collective




a what? of teens

a wince of teens

mutter of teens

an attitude, a grumble, a grunt a disenchantment of teenage girls a confusion of teen boys

when I talk about Speak to a class or an auditorium full of teenagers there’s always that guy

in the back row wearing a jersey soccer or lacrosse or football he’s a good boy, he asks

the first real question—

“Why was Melinda so upset?

I mean, it wasn’t a bad guy with a gun who dragged her down an alley; she liked the guy, danced with him, she kissed him,

so what’s the big deal?”

a kiss of boyfriends a dance of rapists

what’s the big deal?

asked at every kind of school all over the country

curious boys honestly inquiring their friends squirming

a quest of knights errant a smirk of dudes

the question is born out of true confusion no one ever told him the rules of intimacy or the law, his dad only talks about condoms with a “don’t get her pregnant” warning his mom says “talk to your father”

so he watches a lot of porn to get off

to be schooled

porn says her body is territory begging to be conquered

no conversations required you take what you want

an occupation of men those boys taught me to talk about consent

get real about consequences respect the room enough

to tell the truth

cuz, lordy lord, they need it other boys pull me aside for a private conversation, they say one of their friends, a girl who was raped

is depressed and cutting and getting high to forget what happened, they want to help make it better, they want to kill the guy who did it

they’re trying to be righteous, honorable but they’re not sure how

a vengeance of puppies some boys talk about being abused by men of becoming a locker room target of never using the bathroom in school not even once in four years cuz that’s a dangerous place if you’re not an alpha running with the right pack a few became bullies tired of being teased, beat on, made to feel small, left out in the cold they attack the quiet boys the isolated, who walk in the shadows some of the bullies are homebred monsters built by Frankendads, limb by limb filled with regret and juiced by shame a retribution of scars my husband did the math, calculated I’ve spoken to more than a million teens since Speak came out, those kids taught me everything, those girls showed me a path through the woods those boys led me