Witness Mark

The girl is raped, but that’s not the whole story. It starts when she can’t shut.
Watch how she wears out all the doorknobs with her deadened checking. Washes
her sheets again and again, empties herself of everything but sorrow. The girl is raped,
and for a long while, she is boiled down to statistic. Pinned to the corkboard for study.
Sweet parable, constant elegy. She is so pretty when she cries—and what silvered luck—
she does it often. Soon, a boy will become a god from her body because he declares it.
Without trying, the girl floods the room. Is a sharp wet thing outside every joy.

Simone Person is a Black queer femme and two-time Pink Door Writing Retreat fellow. She is the author of Dislocate, the prose winner of the 2017 Honeysuckle Press Chapbook Contest, and Smoke Girl, the poetry winner of the 2018 Diode Editions Chapbook Contest. Simone grew up in small Michigan towns and Toledo, Ohio. She can be found at simoneperson.com.