Some of my students are tackling some very difficult subjects
about abuse and molestation.
"For a Student Who Was Molested."
"I want to write about Patricia and to tell
you, who have the open arms to receive that girl,
to receive my telling.
How she sat tonight in the claustrophobic classroom
in the ordinary chair that kept rearranging itself
against her contours.
She would spread out in one direction,
straighten her legs, then twist.
Ungainly, you might call, a girl who doesn't fit.
Some writers said beauty deforms the space around it.
One such as her gives space order, calms it.
Maybe her core is doubling and boiling.
The original cells out of control,
a potion that can't stand itself.
Inside her God-eye, an unbraiding hatred.
When I look past the face of another student
to find her face, she is hidden behind the shoulder
of the boy in front so that I have
to move to the center of the room and search for her eyes.
She is there even though I know she is breaking herself
down to nothing.
She wrote, Your hands on me in the foster homes
taking my joy, my innocence at five, at eight.
You took much more than you knew."