how do you explain that you were raped by your doctor to your doctor how do you explain to your doctor that he raped you
I was eating my pen, in his bed, when it snapped in a satisfying crunch and the blank ink pooled in my mouth/ and I was drunk like on two beers and I was just wearing a bodysuit/ and he slid his thigh against my jeans in the bar/ and I was beer drunk enough to not remember any other thighs/ and I touched his shoulder/ and the parrot/ the one that is in the rescue home with other parrots/ she was rehomed/ when her owner/ kept hearing crying/ from a baby at night and going to find it/ and she couldn’t find the baby/ in the dark room/ but she just kept crying/ until there were thuds/ and then nothing/ and parrots remember things/ they repeat them/ and the woman/ she said that the parrot needed to go/ back/ because the parrot/ she said/ had too much in her/ had swallowed a baby/ had swallowed these sounds of fists/ and there was nothing she could do to pull them out
The air in an average-sized room weighs about 100 pounds
I never get napkins at restaurants
I just wipe my hands on the thighs of my pants
mornings are for starting but I am not a morning person
so I filled the bathtub with ice water and salt
cracked a dozen eggs into the basin
of the glass tub, because the internet said
eggs behave like jellyfish in water and I wanted
to see something float without sense
and they did, hover like soft balls of poison, mostly
I thought about how my back hurt from laying next to the tub
so I wrap a sweater around my body, pull on my favorite
pair of black heels and climb into the water,
I popped all the yokes with my hips and thighs, sat
leaning my arms on my knees, the internet also said
on the molecular level atoms are always repelling each other
meaning we’re never actually touching anything,
just hovering, with nervous energy
once at a house party, at my house, someone leaned
against my stove knobs and filled the spaces between the
warm bodies with gas, no one lit a match so no one died
so it was just air. I sigh and sink under the surface
the clawed feet shuffle nervously beneath me in my yellow bath
outside the rain taps on the window of the small bathroom
I am making soup, without a stone, for myself
hands within inches
the ghost, in my vagina, sleeps through both of
our alarms. This dude on the subway stood
really close to me, and his elbow grazed my side,
and I let him. And it ached. And I closed my eyes.
thinking that, in my room 101, hands of past lovers
hover just inches away from the swath of flesh
between my armpits, and hip bones, laced with white
stretch marks. Their fingertips look the same even though
it’s been years— I don’t sleep
I run in circles, trying to crash into
those palms, only hitting air, floor, walls
mama I am so heavy and sweaty, the bathtub is drooling my
hair is heavy with scalp.
and my sleep is punctuated by this clucking of a porcelain tongue
and mom/mom/mom/ my sheets are soft
wet and I feel hot, cold, full, so full, of bone.
If A SadBoy Talks About His Crazy Ex-girlfriend In A Forest And No One Hears It Does Said Girlfriend Still Have To Pay Her Therapist
sunday I walked away from a tinder date satisfied because he listened when I said no/ well to, like, the second no/ meaning I am actually elated by a lack of rape/ scientists can grow teeth from urine and earthquakes turn water into gold/ and I mean what’s life without gold or teeth/ right boys? / what I mean is I understand some mouths are mines/ and this mouth is mine has never gotten past my throat/ an appropriate use of a body donated for research is crash-testing/ as in maybe I want to be destroyed/ or I at least want you to try, daddy / his legs and waist curled around my body in his bed like a warm python/ pythons can’t keep their bodies warm alone/ meaning that heat is mine/ was mine/ so snakeboy and I are doing that millennial opening up thing called / talking/ and I immediately regret this shit / because he thinks that this is intimacy/ yet all he does is stack old limp bodies of geese/ he’s shot/ in a meadow/ and their necks dangle/ my neck is long/ not limp yet/ and I mentally map out where my clothes are in this room while he says/ again/ yeah that bitch was crazy / and I’m like yes/ I am.
Hannah Schneider is a firm believer in the art of weaponizing tenderness. She is queer, femme nb, disabled, and here to stay. They have been previously published in The Broken Plate, Lady/Liberty/Lit, and has a forthcoming essay with VIDA. She is the founder and director of thread and currently works as an intern for Catapult. Finder her on twitter @amazinspiderhan IG @amazingspiderhan
