Mary Ann Honaker
Pierced Septum
after the film Audrie & Daisy
After she was raped, the girl’s clothes
turned dark and loose. Her blonde hair
bled black, which she couldn’t cover fully
with her charcoal cap. Even this
wasn’t sufficient for the nighttime
pouring out of her: it tainted her bedroom,
the pictures she scrawled in a sketchpad,
even the air around her as she breathed.
She was a black hole in reverse,
an infinite density of darkness spilling
outwards, outwards. I don’t know
what happened to her little giggles,
light as butterflies. She grew spiky
piercings from her once gentle face.
“The boys went on with their lives,
they graduated, they’re going to college,
they’re making something of themselves.
The girl?” The sheriff shrugs. And smiles.
She has a septum piercing, a crescent
with two sharp spikes pointing down.
It says, Don’t even try to kiss me.
It’s an ugliness only the right man
will be able to see around.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of It Will Happen Like This (YesNo Press, 2015). Her poems have appeared in 2 Bridges, Drunk Monkeys, Euphony, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Off the Coast, Van Gogh’s Ear, and elsewhere. Honaker holds an MFA in creative writing from Lesley University. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia.
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