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Sexual Harassment

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    Poem: Banana Split

    Banana Split

    I was catcalled for the first time today.

    Really catcalled.

    Not a few whistles from an open car window,

    or the flash of a phone camera out of the corner of your

    blue eye.

     

    Catcalled.

     

    The kind of catcall

    that goes

    on

    and

    on

    and

    on

     

    Even when his friend whispers,

    “they’re girls”.

    As if to say they’re just girls

    not women.

    Save them for later.

     

    But still he calls

    Even when you’ve crossed four lanes of traffic.

    Even when you’ve walked down the slanting sidewalk

    to the ice cream parlor with a polar bear

    plastered on the window.

     

    It was the kind of catcall that

    you blame yourself for.

    That you beat yourself for.

    That you go over one hundred times in your head

    how he yelled,

    “that one’s smiling. She likes it”.

    And you realize that ‘one’

    was you.

     

    That you had smiled because your first extinct was to think

    this can’t be happening.

    Your $7.50 banana split melted

    before you could

    work up

    the nerve

    to eat it.

     

    You were watching for the park bench,

    for the three men outside the used bookstore.

    You feel like you’re five years old again,

    forcing walnuts and

    browning banana

    down your throat,

    chocolate syrup melting into your skin

    and dripping onto your shoes.

     

    Your laces were untied,

    and you thought the whole way home

    what would have happened

    if they had chased you.

     

    You think about the fact

    that you didn’t see

    the catcaller from the bench

    or how he had stood to watch

    you and your friends run.

     

    You walk your friend to her class

    across campus

    because you’re all scared

    that he’ll

    come back.

     

    Your body seizes when you see

    a man and you think to yourself

    What will happen

    if he speaks?

     

    You hurry home and the counselors

    file a police report,

    and you watch a movie

    with your friends

    to pretend nothing was wrong,

    nothing happened.

     

    You’re shamed for being scared,

    for feeling threatened

    when his words followed you

     

    all

    the

    way

    home.

     

    For being terrified when

    you thought the other men were him.

    The friends that felt it,

    the shock and the fear;

    they shut up because,

    “it happens everywhere”.

     

    You shove the panic and the shame down because,

    “It’s normal”.

     

    And you try not to think about the intense

    fear that has developed

    to walk downtown again.

     

    I was catcalled for the first time today.

    The kind of catcall that

    shatters

    your perception of the world.

     

    The kind of catcall

    that makes you thankful that

    you’re not a woman yet.

     

    “They’re girls”.

     

    But our age didn’t stop them,

    our group didn’t stop them,

    our clothes didn’t encourage them.

     

    All we wanted was ice cream.

    Instead, we became women.

     

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