JOHNNY DEPP WINS, AND I, LIKE SO MANY OTHERS, THINK OF THE MAN WHO ABUSED ME

by Emma Rhodes

I’m in a courtroom with him in my dreams.

Years live, tangible and growing inside of me.

Stench rotting from the inside out makes me gag, and

the judge thinks I drink and doesn’t believe a word I say.

 

As things rot, their appearance, smell, stories change. 

Leave something to fester long enough it becomes absence, 

memories warp but sickness remains. 

 

We beg you to believe our guts even when they stink.

 

There is a constant drip on the windshield of this car. The evidence is shown 

through the screen so it’s water-warped & memory-warped & 

dream-warped but he doesn’t deny a thing

 

The jury appreciates his honesty, his charm. 

 

Court takes a break. He says we need to play laser-tag—the judge said so. 

That can’t be true and yet suddenly I’m shot by light from all angles, 

put me under a spotlight and call me a liar.

 

The water continues to drip on the windshield.

 

They tell me I had the means to get out. Look at me now. Just drive away they say. Just drive away if it was so bad why didn’t you leave but facing the other wall is a boot on the wheel and I am stuck in his bed, his bathtub, pacing the one single hallway while he left in a car to see 

 

his parents (who are so proud of him, by the way. He was always a great boy.)

 

And Taylor Swift hasn’t said anything this time, none of the #MeToo baddies have spoken.

The water on the windshield breaks through and shatters. 

Glass shards in the courtroom. Everyone yells 

 

“violence!”

 

And I am left. Picking up one shard after another. He walks by, stomps on a shard so it crumbles into a million more (another inconsistency), says 

 

“thanks for keeping me around.”

 

I’ll stop writing about violence when I stop seeing it. 

I’ll stop writing about violence when the world stops trying to kill its women.  

Emma Rhodes is an emerging Queer writer currently living on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee people. Her work has been published in places such as Prism International, Plenitude, Riddle Fence, and elsewhere.

BETWEEN THE HEADLINES

by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Image source: Q99FM

Snow and deeper snow,
all day it snows. Over sixteen
inches. On the news, I hear about a mystery man

dining across America leaving $5,000 tips
for $500 meals. It is, he reportedly says,
the work of the Lord, one tip at a time.

So much snow I cannot walk
across the street. The median
is a wall of white.

Of course I could walk
across the street. But
it would be wet. And deep. And cold.

Suzan tells me about the other news,
how all around the country young men
have taken to approaching strangers

and punching them to make them drop.
They don’t steal or mock. The point
is to make the stranger fall and run away.

Five inches of new snow falls on my car
while I speak to my teacher this morning.
She tells me, “Say yes to every experience.”

I wonder what I would do if someone
punched me. Or my husband. Or my dad.
I wonder what Jesus or Rumi would do.

There is no way to know what we might do.
It is all just perhaps until it actually happens,
like a weather report that calls for 16 inches of snow.

Today it is easy to say yes to the weather.
Yes as I scrape it from the windshield.
Yes as I trundle across the street through

the paths made by other trundlers. Yes
as I slip and bring myself down. Yes
as the snow itself makes the fall so soft. And cold.


Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer lives in Southwest Colorado with her husband and two children. She is a parent educator for Parents as Teachers. Favorite four-word mantra: I am still learning. Favorite one-word mantra: Adjust.