after Diane Seuss

Years of pelvic floor therapy and I still have to stop everything sometimes
to make sure I don’t piss myself, nobody ever tells you these things, Oh
don’t get gang raped you’ll be on the verge of pissing yourself for the rest
of your twenties, sage advice although it went unfollowed,
even now the mawkish smell of the attic somehow finds me, I do not want
to inspire pity so much as revulsion, I want people to despair
like I despaired when I couldn’t run, could barely walk, each stair
a newly unwrapped razor against muscle, now that I’m back I sometimes think
I dreamed it all, how horrible, I could never
live like that, but I did, people said If I were you I’d kill myself and thought
they were being kind, it was batshit, I had a boyfriend for a year
but the entire time I was too sick to fuck, it was like he was my beard
or something, we lay like unwed Mormons because he was afraid to hurt
me, him with his shirt off, me pantless, together we made one person, clothed.