Counting
Tags: Trauma, Mental Health, Sexual Assault, Mathematics, Poetry

I’ve never been great at math but I often think about numbers and

I guess this doesn’t make me credible but it still means I count and

I think about how lucky I am to at least know how to

And I think about how we all count

How we are all

Numb / ers and fract / ions and

There are many ways in which my assailants have marked me

Sometimes in the wake of a memory

Like the smell of cigarettes, sweat and deodorant

His heavy white hands drag my waist back

To 2015, where I was cold

But weighed 125 pounds of heat and

He weighed 200 pounds of heat and grip and

Hate he spelled as “want” and together

We were our own volcano

Out in the middle of the Scandinavias

Not a body within 50 km of our natural disaster

Sometimes my head slings forward to 2018

Bones as frail as 2001, 2000, 1999, 98

My body is marked by these years,

But I feel as small as a number

After 2015 I learned that

1/3 women in North America will experience

Sexual violence in their lifetime and

When I am in a room of two other women

I am reminded of how many times

I’ve been marked by a beast

I wonder if they can see it too,

Can they see me?

— — —

When I am talking to more than 2 women

I start counting how many of us are the same

I think about how we can start a cult

Or a family of prime numbers, divisible by

One and ourselves

Since I’ve learned about the use of these numbers

I’ve never once had a conversation

With a group of people without going over

How many of us are girls, and

Statistically, how many girls were once

Grabbed like me, choked, and held still in time

Held still to remember

We were once girls,

now we are just numbers

When I talk to a boy, I think

Of how I am 80% more likely to

Get raped and killed right then and there and

When I a group of them smoking cigarettes I think

About how 1 out of 6 men experience

Sexual assault in their lifetime and

I look at their hands to see which ones

Are held into fists like mine

Who slouches like me, and they all do

They all do

When I am by myself

I div / ide my body into three parts and

Tell myself that it is only a / part of me

And not a whole of my body anymore and

Those men with the hands and the cigarettes

Feel further away

— — —

Until I’m in a bar with my best friend and

We talk about deleting our

Rapists off of Facebook, finally and

I feel multiplied / e x p a n d e d, and

It’s suddenly become 2/2 or 1/1 or 1, every one

So I start counting the rest of the women in the bar

To make sense of it all, because sometimes

1/3 feels safer than 2/2, 1/1

One whole throbbing body invaded by

Hands and sweat and breath

Once I wanted to see if the numbers changed

If maybe it turned into 1/5 or 1/10 but its the same and

I come across this statistic that says

Every 73 seconds an American

Is sexually assaulted and

Now I count every 73 seconds

Sometimes when I’m in the shower,

I think of how many more have joined me,

How many 73 seconds have passed in my lifetime and

No matter how much I scrub at my skin I am never clean

But I’m not even an American but

Can’t seem to find these Canadian numbers and

What does it mean that half

Of the most significant rapes in my life

Happened outside this country

Does that make me part of that countries statistic?

Does that make me part of that country? The way

That country became

Part of me and

I think of all those who don’t even count as a number

Indigenous women missing and raped and forgotten and

I’m reminded of how much of a

Privilege it is to be looked for

To be counted

But I will count for them, multiply these fract / ions

Or ask my phone to do that for me

Say prayers every 73 seconds and bow my head

In remembrance for how we were fractioned

Fractured, cracked at our clavicle and

Made numbers out of our blood and I will count

And I will count