The girls cut her body open and rolled her
Through waves of salt, she froze and collapsed
Within herself. They spat their curses on her crumbling
Flesh and felt omnipotent yet infected with self-loathing.
They wanted to see her in pain, their power echoing
Across her skin, everything that they suffered from
Transferred onto her, her body deemed useless, repulsive,
Weak. A pleasure that bore thorns. Their sense of selves
Would never recover, they’d never be able to hide who they were.
They pirouetted around her, raptors, sheep and tormentors,
Projecting their sense of powerlessness, frustrations and anger
Onto her, because she was on her own, because she cried, because
She was too afraid to fight back.
She woke up with fears burning in her stomach, in her head,
Every move misinterpreted, disqualifying her, a plaything
Moulded and deformed into oblivion, beyond recognition.
She unlearned who she was, her identity leaked out of her body.
Caught in and paralysed by the vicious circle of victimhood.
The cage grew smaller, more eviscerating, no hand offered
To her in solidarity, no cries to arrest their gestures of destruction,
No words spoken in love to save her, to reactivate her courage
To blast that cage and send those girls back to their own circles of hell.
Croque-Melpomene 