I hear two men chuckling
as I pick something up for them.
I feel wandering eyes,
baring into my skin and bones.
I hear my dad’s sexual comments
about girls my age. (I was fourteen.)
I see a woman,
never noticing the phone up her skirt.
I hear my dad and my uncles,
cheering on my cousin’s catcalling.
I see my new friend’s message,
tired of being “voluptuous” and “innocent.”
I feel tired of meeting boys
who can’t see past my chest.
I feel my friend’s hand,
“accidentally” groping me again.
I feel my husband and his friends,
taunting me as my dignity is shattered.
I hear my boyfriend’s pleas
and my reluctant compliance.
I see the comments,
telling me I should’ve known better.
I feel everyone’s judgment,
how they must think I’m a slut.
I see the marks all over my body,
desperate to wash them off.
I feel the growing guilt,
knowing he’s still out there.
I hear my silence
when my boyfriend jokes.
I see my friend’s pain
and her body on the internet.
In this poem, I wanted to focus on the disturbing presence of sexual violence in our society, and how normalized it is for women to experience it. In 2015, 1 in 5 women in the United States were reported by The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey to have experienced (completed or attempted) rape. This is a terrifying statistic to think about as a woman. I know many other women in my life, and it pains me to think about the pain and sexual harassment that we each have been through. This poem gives me the chance to not only amplify my own voice but also others — including my family, friends, and strangers whose stories I have read or heard of. In other words, some of these lines describe an experience that I have personally been through while others are a family member’s, a friend’s, or a stranger’s. It just goes to show that sexual violence is so normalized as a universal female experience that it is impossible to ignore when answering the question “What is it like to be a woman?”, because being a woman is understanding that you will never be seen as anything more than a sexual object.
