Ruminating Tahrir Square

I listen to Morning Edition on the way in to work every day.  All those soothing public radio voices.

This morning.  Not so much.

This morning there was a discussion around the recurring rapes that are happening in Tahrir Square.  Curious, I pulled up one of the videos.  Bad idea.  Those images have stuck with me all day, touching off little pop rocks of anger.  Why did someone video this?  Why did no one stop it?  Why was it OK to treat any woman that way?  How could this happen with a regularity as people come together to demonstrate?

Rape seems to be the topic this week on the news.  Infuriating sound bytes from men who just sound....well....stupid.  That sound like people who need to dominate to feel OK.  That sound angry that things are changing.  That sound essentially like toddlers to me.  The topic stuck with me all day despite pages of science writing.  Cooking back there behind the stash of Oreos in my cerebellum.

A poem for my rape-sister in Tahrir

I don't see you at first
just the pulsing throng of people
moving in concentric circles
rocking back and forth as they shout
in a language I don't understand.

Dark men part and come together
a living breathing defiling organism
giving me snapshots of you
my rape sister
an arm
a leg
your bare buttocks
in between there is nothing
but shouting and turned backs

I see your rashed and bloody back
your thighs slick with semen
Mostly though I see your eyes
I am haunted by your eyes
dark rolled over white with panic
for I have seen those same eyes
in my own mirror