EMERGING FEMINISMS, When You Renounced the Catholic Church (or sex with you)

By Stevie Lynn Hunter

 

I remember the first time your fingers were inside of me,

but nails inside of me have always bothered me because I only

imagine how they would tear at me, and I was afraid

I might enjoy being torn apart by your hands. Your fingers bumped

into the strings that had been carefully cut and placed inside of me,

your fingers were dancing in a panic, gripping the outside of my thigh,

I said it was okay because I was hungry for sex, because the piece of plastic

that was placed inside of me was designed to create a hostile environment,

and the next morning I was on my knees in the shower, feeling the pounding

of hot water seeping into where your nails were last night. I’ve started to pray

because of you, but it’s not the way you pray. I pray to my destruction,

thinking about how you could devour me, how you could eat me alive.

My knees are aching from the whiteness of this tile, devour me, I repeat to myself,

I’m praying that something inside of me will be destroyed soon, I can feel it inside

of me, lacing its way through the nerves and holding its words like a knife

to my throat right here in the shower, eat me alive, I lift my head towards

the water, opening my mouth, catching the droplets, creating

a sea within my mouth, the water swirls around the taste of you.

you are bitter against the tip of my tongue and violent in my throat,

the waves crash against the top of my mouth, and I am in bed with you again,

the words come pouring out of my mouth, the saltiness of the ocean crashing into your teeth

as I whisper to you, devour me I tell you through blankets, shove your fingers in

me, clasp a hand over my mouth, make it hurt make it hurt make it hurt.

I am bleeding and moaning, moving against the heaviness of salt,

but you are looking at my red thighs, the clumps of blood that

have attached to your fingers. And your mouth catches up with your body

that is retracting itself from the bed, moving like a tide, swiftly and forcefully,

I am being drained and you are being filled with words such as killer

and virgin, and you get up from bed taking away my blood on your

skin, but that blood was meant to comfort a child, it was meant to create,

but what if it has been wasted on me? the copper burns through my stomach,

reminding me of your upbringing. You were taught to reject women like me,

women who were hungry for sex, women who had bruised knees, but you

got into bed with me with a hand over my mouth, begging for me

to be quieter so your god couldn’t hear my moans, couldn’t feel what I felt

in the shower. You stop staring at your stained hands and look up at me—

 

I’m bleeding,

you’re bleeding,

we’re bleeding.

 

*****

Stevie Lynn Hunter is in her second year of studying Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies, and English at the University of Vermont. She has attended the Champlain Young Writers Conference in Burlington, VT. She has two publications, “A Total Stud” and “Under the Montana Sky,” in Teen Ink.  Her poem “Catch, Destroy” is published in the University of Vermont’s literary magazine, Vantage Point.