To the man who screamed at me on the street for not responding to him when he hit on me:
I leave the safety of the glass enclosed bar
With moody lighting signifying ease
The hum of people matching the soft light
To step out onto the pavement of downtown
With flickering streetlights above my head
A feeble attempt to bring safety
when the sun
is no longer in sight
Too tired to burn consistently enough
to cast it’s false warmth
Across the true dark sidewalks
Two blocks is all I have to walk from the fish bowl of a bar
To the thin safety of my aluminum car
Us women know that when we walk the streets of night alone
Headphones dug deep into our ear canals
We seem to be singularly focused to the characters on the screen
Fully immersed to the sounds filling our ears
But we know the stereotype of “women being multitaskers”
Doesn’t apply to folding laundry while talking on the phone
But a trait passed down to us from our mothers
A genetic strong-arm to survive
We know when we walk the streets of night alone
We grow eyes in the back of our heads
Scanning for the shadows that have legs
Of their own and lurk behind us
Our hearing becomes bat like
Attune to the sound behind the honking of horns
Picking up on the stomping of shoes, at least a size 11
Tracking behind us with a rhythm
That matches to the beat
Of the faster tempo’d drum in our chests
Men who take on the form of a mountain lion
Creeping on us like prey,
But this monster doesn’t pounce for it’s next meal,
But treats us like a play thing
A toy to be thrown between it’s mitten like paws
With daggers darting from each pad
We are but a loose ball of yarn
A single thread pulled and the thing unfurls
As he plays with his food
Back and forth
Back and forth
They say if you encounter a mountain lion
You should make noise and make yourself big
If I make noise to you, you’ll want to get louder
If I make myself big to you, you’ll want to get bigger
But you are no mountain lion
But a feral cat
Infested with fleas
Mites and disease
A sick kitten
That is not my role to milk
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