They came for our bodies, our rights, our souls.
They pushed us down and told us they knew better.
Said they were the ones to decide.
It will be okay, he said. It will be fine.
We fought with our words, our votes.
But those who thought it would be fine didn’t show.
Didn’t stand beside us when it counted.
And then we were nothing more than flesh in the eyes of the law.
Consumable.
Disposable.
But it’s okay, he said. It’s fine.
It was not fine. It was not okay.
So I turned away from love. Fromhim.
I chose myself.
I chose to fight back.
I chose to bash in their windows with my fists.
I burned them to the ground.
And now I am just fine.
When Marcella finishes reading the first poem, I see the other girls thinking it over. My heart is beating quickly, and I see a bit of what it must have been like during the Essential Women’s Act. The helplessness they must have felt, much like how we felt at the academy once we woke up.
I think of my teacher Mr. Marsh and how he seemed so horrified by those laws, and yet he couldn’t name a single book written on the subject. How he doesn’t correct the boys’ behavior when they act cruelly. He probably thinks it will all be fine.
I turn to Annalise and find her staring out the window again, impossibly still. So impossible that I snap my fingers to make sure she’ll react. She does, and her gaze drifts over to me.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Sure,” she says, forcing a smile. “Got a match?”
Marcella snorts a laugh, but when we all look at each other again, I think there’s more to her comment than a joke. That poem confirms what we already know—we can only trust each other. We can’t expect anyone to fight for us, no matter how much theysaythey want to.
“So the author doesn’t think we should love?” Brynn asks about the poem, checking with the others for confirmation. “The poem wants us to choose ourselves. And I get it. But …” She furrows her brow. “I love you girls. Am I not supposed to do that?”
“I think it’s just men,” Annalise says. “She thinks they’re too dangerous to love. And maybe she’s not wrong.”
My heart is racing. These poems have the ability to make us see things clearly, but what if they’re only wiping a small section of glass instead of the entire picture window? What if it’s only showing us what it knows will change us? Rosemarie said that Imogene didn’t interpret the poems properly. We don’t want to fall into that same trap.
The girls and I have survived something awful. Do these poems use our trauma to manipulate us?
Use us?
I’m not here to forward Rosemarie’s agenda when I don’t fully understand it. I’ve already learned that shutting everyone out is lonely. It can also be dangerous.
