Any Man

by Amber Tamblyn

Am I in a body? No body answers.

I open my eyes. The sky is a blue-cheese white with bullet holes of lapis, hued by the night’s dethroning. A bird the size of the memory of a bird passes over like a spider falling perpendicularly. Someone shaped the clouds all wrong; splashed chum on the deck of dawn. Everything points away from itself. The abandoned skulls of nests rest in a nearby tree.

The scarf’s warmth is proof. Proof of pumped blood, of living. My living. I am alive. In a body. A trigger pulls and a seismic ache awakens. A searing pain rises, as the sun does, assured of its scorch. Every inch of me shakes. She takes out a phone and dials quickly. I laugh. The end of me tickles. “He looks . . . Oh God, please get here quick . . .” I am not dead. I am not not dead. I am in a body, on a ground, and it is morning. It is Winter or I am Winter. I am alive, at the behest of death’s dress rehearsal. The pain. The pain. Please. My bones break each other, within. Internal ash.

Yes, I am still breathing. No, I am not living.

No, I don’t want to hang on. Yes, I understand I will survive this. No, I don’t remember a face. No, I don’t know how this happened. No, I don’t want to cry.

No, it wasn’t my mother’s fault. Yes, I feel alone. Yes, I believe in God. No, I do not want to pray. Yes, I did see a ghost once when I was ten. No, I can’t remember the words to any songs right now. Yes, everything is on fire. No, I don’t want you to put it out. Yes, everyone’s face is a blur. No, I won’t be hungry again. Yes, I’m done with eating for the rest of my life.

Yes, I’m still breathing. No, I am no longer livable.

Yes, I would like to cry now. Yes, I understand. Yes, I am scared. Yes, I can still feel the pain. No, please don’t tell anyone. No, I’m not ready.

At least it would be there, in some way, nostalgia’s souvenir.

We sink to the bottom of each other’s oceans, drowning in shared silence.

Sexual assault, my brain repeats to my heart.

I want to pull my hand away from hers and never be touched again. I want to take off all my fingers like pen caps and write blood all over this room. I want her to loathe the man who could let this happen to himself, to have no pity, to tell me this is what I deserve. Her touch is a broken mirror in every room of my mind. Her touch is a tender, mistaken fool.

The rest of me will exit our picture’s future. I’ll go somewhere warm, black, and waterless, touching nothing, until she forgets my name.

“Do you ever think about what the offender might be feeling, Mr. Ellis? “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself, Mr. Ellis? “What are you going to do if the offender is someone you know? “What are you going to say to the offender when you see them in court? “Do you think everyone will look at you differently now?

“Do you think you’ll sleep okay in the coming decades? “Do you think this is your fault, Mr. Ellis? “You do, don’t you, Mr. Ellis? “What will Camilla think of you? “How are you going to tell your children? “Are you interested in assisted suicide as an option?

“Do you intend to recover from this fully? “Is there a word for what you’re feeling? “What would your father think of you if he were still alive? “Are you going to cry? “Do you believe in purgatory? “Have you ever heard wolves howl in a place where wolves do not reside?

I’ll have the fish, please, and Camilla my dear, can we swing by the bar on the way home I think I left my body there

“I’m sorry . . . are you . . . Donald Ellis?” No, ma’am, but I get that all the time. You must’ve mistaken me for a butcher’s block. You must’ve mistaken me for a skinned deer. You must’ve mistaken me for some coward. Donald is no longer with us.

“I just want to say it’s so awful what happened to you—you’re all over the news!—but just, like, know that everyone is on your side and sending you prayers . . .” Donald dies instantly

Donald drowns. The room burns as a woman screams a man’s name from downstairs. Donald! What’s going on up there? Donald what’s going on? Donald Donald DONALD

I’ve arrived almost two hours before class so I can prepare. It is my new routine. Sometimes I’ll arrive at an appointment three hours early just so I have time to stare out my car window. I watch and try not to think. Everything is a film: a fly on the windshield trying to get in, a delivery truck parked in front of whatever to deliver something I will never savor, a plane carrying flesh messages across the sky. The movie is wonderful to watch when I’m not in it.

There is no difference between meanings anymore. A cereal bowl is a pillow is a trash bin is a knife is a fistfight on the street.”

JAMARVELOUS83: I read that a reporter from the Dispatch reached out to you for a comment. What are you going to say, Maude? That you’re a monster? That you’re sick? That it’s funny? Are you going to tell them why you did it? Why you did what you did to me? How about you tell me first. Go on. You owe me that much. Tell me. Tell me. Please Tell me motherfucker why did you do this to me <Maude is offline.>

Wish I didn’t lose Papa’s army tags in the ocean that year we went to Florida for vacation. Wish I’d buried him with Mom’s crucifix, like he’d asked. Wish I hadn’t been so selfish. Wish I didn’t have bunions so bad, my big toes look like they have smaller toes growing out of them. Wish we’d had one more kid, Alice. Wish I’d made lieutenant. Had more resources at my disposal to . . . to’ve helped more. To’ve done more. Wish I could forget some things and remember others. “Wish that, someday, they find her. Someday soon. “Wish I had.”

The Decade of Dawning by Donald Ellis Dedicated to the life and memory of Michael Parker. A year goes by. Two. Five. Every unanswered season spins an ocean of apparitions inside you. Ghosts crash like phantom waves, breaking your mind, a limp swimmer who floats landless. A new spring sets in, unsettling your senses, piercing the mud with needled stems, shoving life and its living in your face, making your heart glitter black as a moon’s thought. Another year goes by. Two. Five. Summer burns spring’s hair, sears its scalp, bloodies its bruising, blossoms a fresh, boiling despair within you. You squint your eyes at every female figure, your pulse lurches, heaving nervous questions at your skin: Is that her? Another year goes by. Two. Five. Summer cripples into the rippling qualms of fall. You begin to forget. All the dying leaves of your past plunge to earth like a star’s debris. There’s a cooling. A calming. Your mouth remembers to brush its teeth, not the murky memory of its battery. Pain grows distant but never separate. Another year goes by. Two. Five. Winter overthrows autumn and your body becomes an avalanche of damaged ice waiting for some crueler, crooked sun. Every clock’s a coffined tock you’ve grieved. Your time goes on but your hands cannot. If you’ve learned anything it’s that snow can’t be trusted. One day, your daughter’s angels. The next, a predator’s footprints. You splinter. Wonder if they’ll ever catch her. See a shadow moving in the river. Winter, Is that...

I felt that if I didn’t keep the poison out of me, she could appear. If I stopped caring about my health and what I put into my body, she could appear. If I ate too much, she could appear. If I stopped working out, she could appear. If I had less than the required amount of water per day, she could appear. She could appear. She could appear. She would appear. Then one day, she appeared.

I opened my old OkCupid account, and looked at the list of screen names and saw hers there, offline. This is something I did once in a while—checked in to see if she was, you know, around. I never told anyone, though. I’d go online and just . . . stare. Stare at that screen name. Maude. Maude. It was always offline, but there she was, regardless. There she was, so close, as if on the other side of a door, waiting for me.

My sister, Jen, was pounding on the window, screaming my name. Jamar, open the fucking door, she said. I couldn’t open the fucking door because I couldn’t stand up. I had opened my stomach with a razor blade from as far around my back to the front of my body as I could possibly reach and cut. I had peeled myself open. Like an orange. Not deep, but deep enough to get the poison out. To get her voice out. Just hours before, I had read that she raped another man. His name was Sebastian.

And it is a choice, you know? Living. Like that young man said. Just like dying can be a choice. And I really could relate to that thing he said about living with the anger and all that. That it’s okay to not accept what happened, to find no resolve but still live a parallel happy life. A life adjacent to the things you cannot forgive. I really liked that. That spoke to me.”

Many times I have asked myself what I could’ve done to protect myself that night. I asked myself if I had deserved this. I convinced myself that I did, and it wasn’t hard to. I live in a country built on celebritizing its citizens’ grief and amplifying stories of violence and assault for political gain, click counts, or television ratings. Let me be emphatically clear: They. Don’t. Care. About. Us. People who live through sexual assault are a crash on the side of the road, and the American media is nothing more than cars slowing down just long enough to take a peek. Just long enough to take a picture before speeding off to their next fatality. We are a country that capitalizes on the fetishizing of felonies. A country that says “innocent until proven guilty,” even though the proving of assault is nearly impossible. Tell me how you prove coercion? How you prove the difference between being hit on and hunted? How you prove your arms were held down? Your body was touched? Your life was threatened if you ever told anyone? For people who have suffered violent sexual crimes, proof—the very act of proving—is more than just a burden. It is boundless bearing. An eternity of futility.

I am in a body. It is not the one I came here with, but it is the one I’ll leave here in. I will take care of it. It belongs to me now. My pain, I will take care of it. It belongs to me now. My heart, I will take care of it. It belongs to me now. My story, I will take care of it. It belongs to me now.