9 1/2 Minutes Poem by dy.sin the writer

Her body bends in corners like goners
looking into the eyes of the storm.
Terrified of the pressure put on us

as defendants change hats and twist facts
to prosecute the one that has been attacked
(once and now again) .

Hoping she would fearfully react
and retract her truth as lies to leave him be,
to fall back into the arms of his family.

'With that precious wife and those darling kids,
a father like that can't likely be the enemy, '
they say to me.

'She must have wanted it.
Craved it.
Can't you see?

Why else would a woman walk in the dark?
Never
Unless she wanted to be stalked.

Tied.
Eyes stretched like rubber bands
and man's hands that stretched her legs apart.

Dug her fingernails down his back,
not because she was trying to break free
but because it felt good, ' they say to me.

'And now that he's departed, she screams.
She screams
because she's brokenhearted.

She screams and screams.
Her reason to make him pay
any way she can, ' they say.

Over and over
again
she screams.

It's that crackling terror
that forfeits
my dreams.

It keeps my eyes stretched
and my footprints
in rays of sun.

I say, 'Stay away from the night,
for the darkness
has a way to get it done:

To get the innocent hung
like a jury who can't see
the guilty in the night,

who then thinks that a victim
must have picked out some ol' foe
and attached him to her fright,

like she can't be right
if she can't recognize the color of his eyes,
recall his height, his weight, his shoe size.

If she can't then he must go free,
must be pitied and granted immunity
to slice the next virginity.'

Perhaps, in the night
you, too, can't see.
Can't trust pinpointing the attacker's identity.

Can't understand
unless it was his lustful hands
wrapped around you.

Can't fathom his guilt
unless you're trapped inside them,
held and forced to abide by them,
as he pushes through.

Perhaps then you could see as clearly as I do,
(in the dark) and be able to point out the man
that spread your legs apart

maybe not by sight
but by his breath that steamed death
down your spine

or the rapid beat
of his heart
that sadly kept the time

turning nine and a half minutes of fear
into a lifetime,
a healthy body into swine,

and a mind of invisibility
into penitentiary
confines.

For as he goes free,
the victim serves time
indefinitely.

As he goes free,
she's building brick walls
out of uncertainty.

As he goes free,
silence echoes his voice
overhead

and every breath
that carries his scent
scrapes razors down her head

And now every man is a suspected to be
on the same dark side
that fed her fearlessness to the dead

As he goes free,
she's constantly looking over her shoulders
instead of aiming ahead,

fighting to appeal her own life sentence,
hoping to one day be the woman she was
before those nine and a half minutes.