Kissing Cousins
She loved laying her head on his chest,
just under his chin. Kissing cousins
is what people called them, and
they didn’t mind.
He always walked with his arm,
strong and tight around her waist.
She felt safe in his world,
until the day, alone in a house
usually filled with laughter,
he wrapped his fingers around
her wrist and wrestled her
playfully, even gently, to the floor.
Her 13-year-old mind was dulled
by an aching pain--his knees
crushing into her inner thigh,
pinning the sorrow
into her nerves.
No! She screamed, then whispered,
into the ear she had always trusted,
but there was no one to hear.
His face, the face she loved,
the face she often ran her finger
along the line of would-be
side burns--that face
was steel, with deadly eyes,
threatening her, daring her
to tell. So she slept,
curled as in her mother’s womb,
with his semen running, thickening
to her knees, silent.
© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
Date Rape I
Bitch, he said.
Tonight, you gonna
fuck, fight, or
hitchhike, and she
got out of the car,
started walking
miles from home,
or any lights.
They were in deep
back woods country.
He could rape me,
kill me, she thought.
And no one would
know where to find me.
Terror covered her
like the darkness,
cloaking her with
a sickness that
reached her soul.
It was a football game
and a soda, she thought.
Not an invitation.
He drove off, kicking
gravel, hoping her fear
would be an aphrodisiac,
making her yield.
Twenty minutes later,
he returned to that road
and saw her, walking
hard like an angry woman,
her nostrils flaring with
a righteous fire.
She had decided
it would be a fight.
© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
Date Rape II
The months of hanging out
had eased into a “thing,”
and they knew a comfort
with each other neither
had found with anyone else.
So, when he took her
to his mother’s house
and in ten minutes
threw her hard against
the stereo, her back
jarred by the searing
sensation flowing
up and down her spine --
and the hard rock music
pulsing, loud through
her body, his tender hands
becoming a vise, his breath
fierce, his eyes nothing.
His fingers ripping
her panties, his knees
spreading her reluctant legs,
and terms of endearment
converting into threats,
menacing, carrying every
intent of harm if she did
not comply.
He doesn’t know, or care,
that she might have said
yes to him, that he did
not have to force her,
but it was too late to say
yes, and the music took root
in her heart, promising her,
things would never
be the same.
© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
Walking Sexy
She pounds the ground with her stride
in near-military fashion, walking hard,
so hard that each step jars her knees.
She walks fast as if the distance
between where she is and her
next destination will increase
in unmanageable increments.
She walks with her fingers curled
in an unconscious fist,
crossing streets when she is faced
with recognizable strange men.
She stopped gliding like liquid chocolate,
or flowing like gentle brooks
the day after the dangerous he
gripped her wrist, first playful,
then persistent saying, she asked for it.
It was obvious in the way
her mini-dress flirted with her thighs
as she approached him, walking sexy.
© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
Bruises
Bruises told her that the nightmare
had been real. The bruises on
her thighs, where he pressed
his knees then his hands, then
his manhood were deep,
wide, purple,
the bruises on her wrist
were like bracelets,
two of a kind,
dark and brooding,
the bruises across her lip
where he clamped
his hand to hush her
crying was a faint ring,
but just as painful,
the bruises on her back
and hips where he
handled her like a
rag were broad
and titled,
the bruises on her soul,
imperceptible.
© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
How Many Times?
For Women
How many times have you been raped,
she asks, but I know she wants only
to know the times some man succeeded
in forcing himself into me — a cousin,
a family friend, a lover, a stranger . . . .
Not the near rapes where I fought
for my life, or the time Troy stopped
the elevator between floors and said:
when I see you, I don’t see married
or preacher, I see all woman,
then lay his suffocating body up
against me with the rise in his pants
thickening in my struggle.
She doesn’t mean the times I had
to physically remove a man’s hand
from my breasts because my
drop-dead look didn’t work. In fact,
he said it turned him on.
Or, when I was 100 pounds, short
and sexy like Tony Braxton at the time,
feeling eyes undress me and make
love to me against my will.
Or, the times I went home and took
long showers trying to wash the filth
of a state hospital social worker
off my body.
He pushed himself up against me
from behind, and I turned around
swinging. Get over it, chaplain.
This is the world, he said.
And I promised him that if he so much
as look at me wrong again, I would
start sexual harassment charges.
He laughed, called me crazy as
the inmates, said I needed to
grow up, be a big girl,
but he never touched me again.
She doesn’t mean the time I
reached to comfort a friend
who then tried to force a kiss
while groping up and down
my leg.
So, how many times
have you been raped?
© Valerie Bridgeman [Davis]
Stunning Revelations
A girl child ain’t safe in a house (world) full of men.
— Sophie, in The Color Purple
The first time I heard
Sophie say it, I was stunned,
and could not move for days.
I knew it was one of those
truths that is really true,
but rarely said.
A girl child—
of the female persuasion,
strong and weak, full
of promise, sometimes
trusting —
ain’t safe —
is always in danger, insecure
and must not let down
her guard in her own
house —
in a house —
a refuge from the pain
of living, a shelter
from dangerous
people —
full of men—
of the male persuasion,
weak and strong,
full of deception,
sometimes dangerous.
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