Editor’s note: Content warning – This poem contains graphic imagery and allusion to sexual assault. Reader discretion advised.
They called me a vulture because I believe survivors.
That’s fine.
I will be the vulture.
I will pick apart the rotting meat that infects society with its disease.
First I will consume the rape apologists.
I will start with their eyes.
They are blind to abuse, so surely that is where the rot starts.
I
will proudly soar over the landscape,
wearing not a single feather on my head
so that I can plunge
my beak
in and tear the rot from this world.
I
will be one of the biggest birds in the sky.
People will mistake me for a hawk.
They will point,
They will shudder,
because they know I go where they could never,
and not only did I survive,
I will thrive
and grow stronger each time
I erase the rot and suffering and destruction
that others left unwitnessed.
They
will fear me
and see me as an omen,
They know when they die,
I will be there to feast,
to look inside them where none others have gazed,
then clean their corpse
and return their savagery and crimes to the ecosystem.
I
will restore the earth to balance
after the crimes they have rationalized and romanced
by not shying away
from the thick and bloated trauma stench.
And
I will not be alone, we will never be alone,
because vultures live together,
pair-bond apparent as we float the air currents.
They called me a vulture, because I believe survivors.
Maybe,
Maybe,
They were right.
- Art: Celebrate Neurodiversity - October 13, 2019
- Hell is Other People, a One Act Play - September 27, 2019
- Poem: They Called Me a Vulture - June 27, 2019
