i am mostly afraid
i am mostly afraid
of having to call it
harassment –
i see you coming
and pull out
headphones,
knowing still
that you won’t
stop until you
get an answer –
naming something
gives it breath,
and once again,
damned if you do
damned if you don’t
.
20150429:1050
y
y 
This speaks to me
thank you – but how long can we ignore that nagging feeling to do something about it?
Im still waiting and have been for over a decade now….In theory we should do something, then reality hits…
Laura, i’m not sure about your situation – but that’s crazy and on a level, traumatizing. what “reality” is hitting?
Bills + a place to live. We are best friends so not as awful as it sounds, hun. Just dont like the liquor once a week + the verbal abuse that sometimes comes following….thank you for being concerned.
ah, i see… take good care, y
I am pretty much past this now. But when I was younger, street harassment was simply dehumanizing for me. I had hoped it was less awful now than it had been. But it seems it isn’t. Sorry! At least you have ear phones, I just had a ‘bitch-face’ to put on. 🙂 But that didn’t really do much good (it didn’t for me at least), as you note at the end of your poem.
it wouldn’t bother me so much if it were not recurring from the same person who is on my daily commute. it makes going to work every morning unpleasant as i try to find ways to avoid being seen.
Bummer. 😦
i am not afraid
of dialing a call for
hearing the space an
answer provides the
sky doesn’t lean on its side
the ruthless-ness of
clouds, not fooling our
selves as we don’t stop
because we can’t till
our hearts actually do, and
yet, look and see how
to relate answers
as a breadth of weather, the
names of air exhale
anyway inhale, I’m
not a smoker
Just say Don’t
Reblogged this on foreverqueenred.
Reblogged this on Francescalli and commented:
This poem holds in it the dilema of speaking things out loud. There can be a dreaded solemnity of calling certain things what they are, thereby giving it an existence and adding your individual experience to a pile of preexisting context you never thought you’d associate with. I know this inner dissonance and so this poem speaks to me.
yes! thank you for trying to explain that feeling…