Content Warning: This prose poem contains reference to sexual assault. If this is triggering to you, please skip this post.

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I followed him to the jail, but the bars of justice were too weak to hold him, and they dissolved under the weight of he-said-she-said; he slipped through, dripped through like ooze, like slime, like the slippery dicks who say we’re always asking for it anyway.

Some time later I put a dead crow on the windshield of his car, parked in front of my house, a big beater of a thing, all rims and misplaced testosterone; he was my neighbor after all, and after all that he still couldn’t keep that rusty bumper from crossing over into my space; an invader of space, that’s what he was, believing his big, jutting things could and should and would assert themselves upon other people’s property.

The crow had drowned in the bucket of stagnant water around the pony keg in my backyard, the same water that used to be ice around the same keg from the same party I threw Saturday night where that same neighbor had once been a guest, had once returned later all alone after drowning himself in a different bucket, a bucket of Budweisers and probably Crown and Coke, and broke into my house then my bedroom then my passive, passed-out personal space.

I guess the water got stagnant from all that slime, from too-weak bars, from closed-down bars, from badly-parked cars, until I just wasn’t able to clean up the mess from that party, until the pony keg and its bucket of melted ice stayed in the yard for a bit too long, how long, I don’t really know, but it was long enough anyway to drown a crow.

© Vixen Lea 2021

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April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. There are ribbons and memes and hashtags to draw attention to this ongoing (and far too common) issue, but we must remember that behind all of that are the real people and their stories. You can read more of my personal story here.

Writing is my outlet. Poetry is one of the ways I release old traumas – by letting them become the fuel for creativity; by using pain to build something unique and beautiful. I believe it is important to face our shadows, know them, and shake them out in the light.

Alcohol played a role in the story I shared above, and because of that, for many years I felt deep shame about what happened to me. I am learning to find freedom from that shame and to no longer let it dampen the way I experience life. This is Shadow Work, and it is essential to truly claim self-love.

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Listen to me read ‘To Drown A Crow’ on SoundCloud.

(Featured image of crow by Juha Lakaniemi on Unsplash)