The Molester

(Villanelle Revised Edition)

After childhood, you grew longer, taller, your face slimmed

Physical transformations and new outlooks on life born

in disbelief of how long it took to escape from him.

Years go tense, shift by and chisels trim

a Michelangelo of Tamar, mourning

the virgin she once was, taller, with a face slimmed.

Her predator, your Amnon took your rights to decisions so you greet him.

do you still know the woman you were before turning that corner

on ravage street, pure and qualified, ready to meet him?

You do; but you hated being the laughingstock, a scrim

board of illusion for married “virgin” women who wanted to scorn, confusing

together get off on your tragedy, making discrete you and him, slim—

a match made in heaven.  The prim

couple, pathetic, costumed in rejection horns,

optionless, you adapted instead of trying to escape him,

every part of him, in every man who knew you in dim

lights, smoked cigars, drank and used you wearing laurel wreaths of thorns.

Days in and out, the hours you spend, you skim

their sheds of ash.  All those years and you never escaped from him.