I Am Not A Statistic
I am not a statistic
My favorite kind of candy growing up was watermelon vodka.
It burns at first but it dissipates and all that is left is a warm belly and the stale sweet taste of watermelon candy.
Stale and sweet like the tears of a little girl.
Burning like the scorching remains that are left of me.
25% of women have been sexually abused as children.
I never knew a number to represent me
as I am no statistic,
But what if I was a piece of art---
My freckles would be stippled stories---
The gospel of my limbs.
In me you would see the feathers of a raven;
A trickster in cohabitee; God of prophecy; Companion of the Dead.
In my quivering joints, you could see a broken child,
a 10-year-old girl.
Within the brush strokes of my hair you could see a rope swing---
hanging from a tall tree in front of a blue house.
In the forest grove of my eyelashes you would see a moving van full of new neighbors,
A family.
The middle child;
16.
I am not a statistic.
The mean of my standard deviation
Is subject to sample variation.
The trend line of my downfall is not here to represent your data.
You cannot predict the campaigns of my people
When the stock market in my left lung has crashed.
If i was art
My veins would be made of kaleidoscopes---
Pumping through my arteries.
I would sneeze glory and choke on magic---
1 in 6 American women have reportedly survived sexual violence.
I am not a statistic.
If I was literature---
My lips would be nonfiction and my fingers would be individual ballads;
Proclamations of my love for myself.
1 in 5 women will be raped in their lifetime.
1 in 3 girls.
No girls without a story.
1 in 3 girls will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
68% of victims will remain silent.
Give me two girls and I will tell you:
I am 1 in 3 girls.
I am not a statistic.
The theoretical inferences from the branch of your mathematics tells me that less than 10% of sexual abuse cases taken to court end in criminal charges for the defendant.
I will not allow you to resort to your methodology to support your hypotheses;
I am my own judge in my own court,
Watch the jury of my teeth chatter.
If I was art,
I would be a mosaic of something that was once possibly whole.
As a mirror having been broken;
One picture used to show and now every shard is a new perspective.
In the top right corner, you see a blue garage at the side of a blue house on a blue street.
The only color I can see is blue anymore.
I was always told that red was the color of danger;
But i should have been afraid of the color blue.
I am a monochromatic painting of trauma,
A raven is born of shadow and ash.
Called forth by the drums beat inside of a woman's womb.
Cloaked in darkness.
Looking like the grim reaper.
I am one in 3 girls.
90% of adult sexual assault victims are women.
Girls who are statistics.
Women who are statistics.
Don’t you dare make me into a statistic.
I am art, unable to be made of numbers and percent signs,
I am not made for your sources---
Nor for your graphs.
The Raven shows up again in the middle of my canvas.
The liar, the trickster;
Shapeshifter--now a 16-year-old boy.
His teeth are showing,
Not in a blue smile---
but a red snarl.
68% of victims will remain silent.
1 in 3 girls.
Don’t you dare make me a statistic.
Every 98 seconds an American is sexually assaulted.
MAKE ME ART.
Statistics describe phenomena for conclusions to be drawn;
The only conclusion that i see is that the phenomena of your incompetence at protecting your women.
You may not complete a literature review on your findings to create awareness;
No one will listen to you anyways.
No one wants to hear what happened to us.
I never knew myself to fear a neighbor;
Now I fear every neighbor,
7 in 10 sexual assaults are committed by someone that the victim knows.
I wonder what he thought when he first met me, such a young girl right next door.
Easy pickings.
I wonder if he still remembers what he said to me the first time he hurt me.
I still remember and i despise myself everyday.
I wonder if he feels guilt.
Someone is sexually assaulted every two minutes in the World.
2 minutes is easy enough when you had the time to stop counting.
Statistically speaking there are 720 sexual assaults everyday
DON'T YOU DARE MAKE ME A STATISTIC
I am a piece of art who has moved from museum to museum throughout the centuries of spectators.
I am not a statistic
Victims have numbers instead of names.
I am a survivor.
Don’t you dare misrepresent me as a statistic with a number of disregard.
93% of perpetrators of the sexual abuse of children know their victim.
I always wonder if my brother knew what kind of friend he made.
What kind of boy he let near his 10-year-old sister.
I didn’t know what it was called until two years after.
I always called it my mistake.
I defined words with experience and I should have known as a ten-year-old girl what to expect.
It was my fault.
It was not my fault,
I am still learning.
I am not a statistic.
I am an art piece as guilty as that damned raven.
To hell with the numbers.
1 in 3 girls will be sexually assaulted in their life.
68% of victims will remain silent.
100% of women have a story.
WE ARE NOT STATISTICS.
And the by the time us girls are women,
the numbers will have fallen away into faded oblivion.
Every girl is our sister and every woman is our companion,
And our stories ring like a sloppy refrain that should have ended years ago;
To a song that no one wants to listen to.
What if I was art?
When he told me not to tell my parents?
I should have told my parents.
When he told me, they wouldn’t believe me---
Would punish me for lying---
Would punish me for allowing such a thing.
A 10-year-old victim of manipulation.
I should have run.
1 in 3 girls are sexually assaulted every two minutes.
How many men are rapists and molesters every two minutes.
How many men catcall every 2 minutes.
Men are part of the statistics too.
98.1% of rapists who assaulted women are men.
For male rape survivors, 93% of the perpetrators were men.
Do not use your descriptive statistics to define me.
Do not draw me with your shaky pencil and try to connect the dots.
The art I am made of is incomprehensible
And the language I’m written in is untranslatable.
You may not apply your numerical substance to my impotence.
I am not a statistic!
If I was art I would be a canvas, unwed to color.
The art of me would be the rough folds in my tapestry---
where in the wrinkles you can find resistance.
I see the raven in my dreams.
Ravens, connected to the god apollo
The god of truth and healing yet all i can do is lie
And my bones still remain shattered.
I tried to forget those images.
I tried so hard that now it is the only thing that I can remember.
The shapeshifter of gods and mythology.
A messenger of dark blue now black.
The color of depth.
Is stalking me.
1 in 3 girls will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
I shiver when I enter a garage anymore,
The summer spent behind the closed doors of a garage at 10 has left me freezing.
When he threatened me,
Kept me returning like some damaged boomerang,
I shouldn’t have believed him.
Naive naive little girl.
You are a statistic.
You are 1 in 3 girls.
You are not art, you are made of numbers and if not that---
what are you?
Because your body no longer belongs to you.
Fingers have left impressions on you where they dug in.
68% of victims will remain silent.
25% of women have been sexually abused as children.
I never knew a number to represent me
as I am no statistic,
My favorite kind of candy growing up was watermelon vodka.
It burns at first but it dissipates and all that is left is a warm belly and the stale sweet taste of watermelon candy.
What age is too young to feel the burn?
I think the universe doesn’t care,
As I have been on fire all of my life.
I have still not been extinguished.
13% of women who are sexually assaulted commit suicide.
A little girl too light to be hurt by the rope swing around her neck---
In front of a blue garage,
Connected to a blue house.
She was not afraid to die.
Afraid to live more like it.
Wings of a raven at her back.
Convinced she can fly at 10 years old,
It's funny what you can convince a 10 year old of...
1 in 3 girls will be sexually assaulted in their lifetime.
My body is a buffet and today i am all you can eat.
I'm afraid he is coming back for seconds.
I'm afraid he is coming back for thirds.
I am 1 in 3 girls.
But I am not a statistic.
I am art.
Made in a hurricane.
Sediment exposed to erode a marble statue.
Steel limbs to support my heavy heart.
I sculpted myself from the rubble of a city
And i named this town after myself.