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Heather.
I tried to find you yesterday in the way it’s done now: 
typing your name in front of a blinking cursor.
But then realized there was no real reason you’d use the same last names you used back then:
One--your biological father,
absent,
and the other-- a step-father,
that I always thought was always gone as well.

Heather.
I tried to remember yesterday;
the last time I saw you.
Vail-it must've been.
You’d relocated on a promise--
a promise of a steady job
in a ski town
with people you knew from home.

Heather.
Yesterday, I tried to remember when we met,
and how I liked you right away;
It took me two weeks--
two weeks to find the spell.
You'd  push back playingly, liked being teased and prodded .
Behind a stainless counter, you’d smile
then hand full drinks
through a window
to a car.

Heather.
They gave me the key and never knew what happened.
We were hungry
snuck in, reassembled the soda machine,
turned the fryer on with just a match.
Laminated counters, laughing  and talking until we got our fill.

Heather.
Today, I'm not sure how it happened?
Was it the back of my best friend’s truck under a blanket?
Was it the abandoned suburban field you let me take you to after our first date?
Was it the mountain park where we’d wondered wandered away to level ground
out of sight?

Heather.
Your apartment?
Was the weather cold?
Windy? 
Your mother insisting, "Just come home."
You could bring me too if that
could make it easier.

Heather.
Was I tired?
Did I say I wasn’t going home?
Your bed; I took my clothes off rather fast.
You followed, whispered, "Sssssh.  Things will be okay."

Heather.
On top.
You stopped.
Things never turn out the way they should…
Should is such a....
Sshhhh.

Heather.
Today, I replayed our follow-up conversation:
You walking across a parking lot,
telling me everything turned out okay.
I tried to tell you that I was almost certain that it would.
Then you brought up that you felt forced, coerced,
and me insisting, "It wasn’t rape."
I didn’t hold you down, put myself on top?"

Heather.
I knew so little about sex and how it made others feel. 
Sorry seems so sorry.
Sorry is such a...
Ssssssh...

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Unknown said…
If I saw this before I don't remember... it chills me... as a person who was held down by force and as a friend of yours who knows that you are a wonderful person who now questions your past actions... I am glad that you are willing to look at yourself honestly... we all have so much work to do... thank you for doing yours for yourself.
10:37 AM
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