Meditation 83

28 July 2020

The aggressor is a woman in a long black dress; a man in camo wrestles her to the street. He sticks his knee in her back while another man straddles her. The theater of rape as revenge is not actual rape, therefore cannot be tried. Because it’s theater, it never happens. There’d been a Greek chorus, but its members turned away from tear gas and pepper spray. It was the year of not being able to breathe; hospitals filled with victims of violence or virus. Federal agents were silent as they roamed the streets. “Who are you?” a woman yelled, but they made no answer. Violence begins in silence. She’d sit in a room for days staring straight. She didn’t want to say anything she’d regret, so she offered us her withholding. An angry quiet settled into the room.  (Red and white squared upholstery, a file cabinet in the closet for important papers, hinged metal turtle on the desk to hold stamps, velvet inside its lid.) We gave you all the opportunities. The vice president’s aide was sent to Texas to see kids in cages; her colleagues thought she’d feel compassion for them. “It didn’t work,” she announced, on her return. After a bout of coronavirus she announced her pregnancy on twitter.