One day, someone will ask
how we knew.

We will say:
We were there.
We were always there.

Listening to the way
their god only showed up
for men in suits,

cataloguing each time
the law chose a handshake
over a child,

writing it all down
in the dark
until the page itself
began to burn.

We lay it down carefully
between us,

a path out of the sanctuary,
out of the courthouse,
out of the comment section
and into a place
where even our rage
is a form of
loving the living.
. . .

So we gather
what they call “anecdotes”:

a girl who lived,
a girl who didn’t,
a list of men,
a line of mothers,
a ledger of rooms
no one should remember.

We stack them
like bricks left over
from a church they sold
to pay for their secrecy.

We call it what they fear most:
evidence.

They know we know.

You can hear it
in the way they say
“alleged”
like a threat,

in the way they say
“move on”
as if history
isn’t still walking around
wearing our faces.

It’s not a bombshell.
It’s an admission.
They are counting
on our exhaustion.

. . .

We knew in that wealthy county
where children vanished from bus stops
and came back only as headlines,
where the list of “clients”
was a greater secret
than the bodies of the children
they left behind.
. . .

We know.

We knew when they told us
to lower our skirts
instead of raising their sons.

We knew at the bus stop,
in the pew,
in the counselor’s office
where the clock watched us
more closely than she did.

My old friend used to say there is a place
between silence
and speech.

We live there now--
tongues split
between scream
and affidavit,

between the way our hands shake
and the way we steady them
to sign another girl’s name
on the petition.

. . .

whose blood gets called
“sacrifice”--

but
“offer it up to God,”

whose body becomes
“lesson”--

but
don’t dress like that,

whose future is negotiable--

hers, bargained away
to protect his “bright future,”

a man
with a microphone.

. . .

This was never about Christ.

Christ is not on the non-disclosure.
Christ did not motion
to strike that testimony.
Christ did not raise his hand
to swear to tell the truth
and then fold it
into a plea deal.

This is about control:

All that screaming about
bathrooms,
school libraries,
rainbow stickers on a classroom door,

whatever this week’s outrage is
in their culture war--

it’s a flare
thrown in your eyes
so you don’t see
who is standing quietly
behind you
with the key to the nursery.

. . . #poetry

They name it “order,”
“law,”
“godly authority.”

We hear the old words
behind it:

you belong to us.

#poetry >>

Look at the bills they write

Hands shaking with urgency
to marry off girls
not old enough to sign
their own permission slips.

Hands steady as stones
when they lower the age
to charge a child as an adult,

so a 14-year-old
can become “prostitute”
and a 50-year-old
can become “misunderstood.”

On the screen, men laugh
into microphones:

she’s lying,
just regret,
“buyer’s remorse,”

“she was almost grown”--
what they mean is:
his future counts,
her consent doesn’t.
. . .
#poetry >>

On Sunday, he is “brother,”
“reformed,”
“anointed.”

The girls take communion
with the hand
that once covered
their mouths.

. . .

#poetry >>

In the church basement
they whisper “forgiveness”
like bleach.

They paint over the mold,
hang the cross back up
over the wet wall.

Years later they sell the church
to pay for settlements--
writing checks for sins
they will never name.

Somewhere, her file is mislaid
in a cabinet that only opens
for men in ties.

. . .

#poetry >>>

In the courtroom, he is “your honor,”
“first offense,”
“promising future.”

The girl is an exhibit
that never makes it
to the table.

He leaves with 180 days,
a wrist politely touched,
paperwork that forgets
how long a child’s body
stays afraid.