Laughter

I heard a child laugh today
Peals of unadulterated laughter
Her small body swallowed by bellows of joy


Her voice reached into my world and caressed my mind
Assuring me that color would someday return
to the dull washed out pages of my life


Then there was silence
And I was left with fragments of jarring joy
Bits of untethered emotion

And as the joy floated up beyond my reach
I remembered that I lost my joy
The day I gave up life

Rape

I was a child when we met

You a decade or so my senior and I a newly considered legal adult

You raped my mind and then you raped my body

You twisted my mind around your own and used your cleverness to reach upon my weaknesses

you convinced me to go to a secluded house in the country with you that I later learned was some sort of home for troubled men from Hassidic communities

You convinced me that your sperm had some kind of godly property, and that if it would enter me all of my mental pain would be healed

I believed you

I lay there unmoving and unprotected and I let you rape me

You then told me to leave, and I did