the files

they sit across from me like always. Separate by magnitudes of space, longitude and latitude lines in between our screens, syncing our calendars.

They sit like they always do. Their eyes flicker like they always do. Their lips pull into the barest flash of a grimace I could almost write off as a wi-fi glitch.

They are used to tucking themselves in between the creases of inconvenience that help everyone around them forget what happened.

They are experts at erasing.

Every flicker of an eyebrow and look away perfectly coiffed lets the secrets the bad men stole into them lay dormant long enough for their mothers and fathers to forgive them the sins of the trespasses of adults.

It’s as convoluted as it sounds.

Over and over again I sit and I stare at the rain outside of the window to my left and I nod and murmur and gasp,

“I can’t believe they did that” “I can’t believe that happened to you” “someone should have” “you didn’t deserve” “how could” “I can’t” “it can’t” “no” “no” “no” “no” “no”.

“Oh, no.”

The files are live in my Google Drive. They are scattered like constellations across the clutter of the Google Chrome tabs on my laptop, waiting for me when I wake in the morning, waiting for us to wake up.

It’s as easy as a scathing look across the dinner table to strip a girl of her personhood. To grab and gobble up her body, chew and spit her out as a parentified zombie, another soldier ready to die on the sword of our sins.

Jesus and the Holy Mary, Mother of God, Queen of the Universe arrive in the faces that pop up on my laptop, gently held in black Zoom screens. I say, “hi how have you been these past weeks?”

And we get on with the hard work of resurrection.

After our work days, my sisters and I exclaim in tired voices, “another one today” and “the truth finally now” and “I can’t believe how horrific it is.” We sit with our backs stooped and our eyes gray, energetic hygiene be damned.

It would only add horror to the horror show were we to not wear the pain of what we hear on our bodies. We swath ourselves in our sadness and horror like the women of old bared their breasts on battlefields mid-skirmish. We use our hearts to stop wars.

We finish up and shower or bathe and channel out another life saving maneuver amidst talking to chatgpt and begging God for strength.

Something has been very very broken, for such a long time.

It takes the tearing of the hem line to re-sew the fabric of Us.

We are weeping at the seams.