Hunted Carrion

A man walked into my apartment to fix my fuse,
and I thought he was a garden snake.
Before I knew it, I had a python wrapped around my neck.

The rapists, the racists, the misogynists, the homophobes,
the transphobes, the fascists, the broken, broken boys...

...the secrets, the shames, the manipulations, the hate,
the perversions, the abusers with the most convincing masks.

These wounded boys, these sins of the fathers:
what generational curse followed me? My life burned
to cinders, and I had to transform my ashes into something
that could fly out of fire. The only justice I seek is to speak

my truth, lessons learned in the underworld.
And to say it in poetry, my native tongue for despair,
and in sonnets, a form traditionally used to express love.

Hunted Carrion: Sonnets to a Stalker uses linked sonnets to tell the true story of a stalking and a prolonged sexual assault. It highlights the interplay of both the victim and the perpetrator's childhood and adulthood trauma and the impacts of their lingering scars to examine how we trace generational roots of psychology and use radical compassion to forge healing--even for the most revolting of crimes and betrayals, even for wounds that may never fully heal.