Crescent Moons

When the forensics nurse inspected me, she couldn’t

see the tenderness he showed me after. My walk home

 

squirmed sore with night. I passed the earthworms

displaced to sidewalk, their bodies apostrophed

 

in the sun. I did not anticipate a grief

so small, my noun of a prayer, Eat dirt to make dirt.

 

Took a man’s hand as he led me to cave. So long

as I breathed, I could huff violets in his dank, practice

 

earth’s gasp. Mother lifts daughter, daughter casts

look at camera, a killer, a stick in the mud. I hold

 

my own hand. When the forensic nurse inspected

me, I described the house, historic blue. Asked me

 

to push my hips down. Little crescent moons

where his nails stabbed into me. She gave me

 

the word abrasion so gently I offered consent. Blue

as the moon when I sighed wait, blue as the no of my



throat. Abrasion, possibly extended form of red.

Harm results in a starry night too, many galaxies

 

scraped under the nail of a heavenly body. Ah my

second earth, its wounds hardened into swallowed

 

prophylaxis, an injection pooling between muscle

and skin. A woke seed. Deadarmed anti-moons

 

aggregated. A storm can travel seeds up to 30 miles

away. They dust on the sidewalks like lost data.

 

He did not intend Did not. Bloody speculum

a telescope searching the angry night sky for proof.

Credit

Copyright © 2019 by Natalie Eilbert. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on May 21, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets.

About this Poem

“After I was assaulted, when the sexual assault nurse examiner (SANE) administered the rape kit, she used words matching the natural landscape of earth to describe my wounds. There is much to connect between a woman’s ruptured body and our ruptured earth, neither of which has much recourse for justice, recovery, or prevention. I urge you to support your local domestic abuse shelter, and help victims and survivors achieve some modicum of safety.”

Natalie Eilbert