red and black sentences
The infrequency of rape stupifies me.

As a girl, you'll never be able to comprehend what a boy goes through when he hits puberty - to conceive the devil that captures his soul engulfing his entire being in a potent raw physical drive, tightening its grip, tightening him under his skin, like a zipper forced against the will of the bag it holds - unless... unless you could, perhaps remember what you go through, in those few moments, when you're up against the wall with your man, the faintest suspicion of his aftershave curling in as he moves closer and closer, streaking your hair with his red finger-tips, his stubble brushing against your cheek and his chest accidentally making the slightest contact with the tips of your nipples - your pulse races and your heart pounds and your toes curl inward within those hot sweaty tight shoes, and your red red red lips wait wet in anticipation for his, and your head tilts ever so slightly to the right and your eyes shut as you hear his warm breath move up your neck, as everything - as everything zones out.

Now imagine that - that zone - not for the mere 20 seconds that you do, but for twelve minutes, or twenty-five or forty.

It happens to him and me and him and every man who doesn't know you, every time he sees you walk past at dinner, at the canteen, when you sit next to him in class, while it rains and you sit huddled under the caving roof of the bus-stand, and when you walk past his house down the alley where the street light just went out the other day - his brain flushes an overdose of adrenaline through his veins, colouring his blood like a drop of red diffusing in sparkling, clear water - his muscles constrict, and his vision blurs as everything but the outline of your body melts out into a yellow haze, his heart-beat accelerates and his hands tremble with the excitement that only euphoria can provide as he pins you hard against the wall and bites your lower lip, pushing you into him tighter and tighter until there's not an physical inch between the two bodies and the wall, puncturing your lip until the air is heavy with the smell of warm blood as it spurts out of your lip at first and then trickles down his chin, until there's intense pain or pleasure in that contorted face of yours, until the tips of his fingers match your outstretched hands, as you scream and you scream and you scream in the black black black cobbled street that no one watches.

And then, he's sentenced.