Demi Wetzel: #MeToo Series
DO YOU WANT TO KNOW?
I found your Facebook profile a few months ago.
An honest accident, I swear.
I didn’t want to find you because I didn’t know
you existed.
How could anyone exist as a partner
to the person
who almost kind of tried
to ruin my life?
Yet there you are
wearing scrubs
which means
you must have a respectable job
where you spend your days
caring
for others who are hurting
or in some type
of unmanageable pain.
Would you care for me
if I came in on a stretcher?
I have to believe you would.
You have what looks like
three small,
very small children.
All petite despite their ages.
Their eyes give me chills
because they look just like
his.
I imagine you going about the hospital
cleaning up uneaten jello
and flipping through charts.
I want to reach out to you
as a woman
as the woman
your husband raped
years and years ago.
I bet you’ve heard my name
once or twice maybe
on a random occasion
when someone remembered
to say it out loud.
Have you thought about me too?
Do you wonder how I got
to where I am today
knowing I too
once lay under the body
of your husband
and the father of your children?
Do you look at my photo
a few times a month?
What if I told you
the recurring nightmare of my life
was actually true?
Would you believe it involved
perhaps the love of your life?
In the nightmare,
your husband is the star.
I relive that night/s
too often in my mind.
More than I’d like
to admit.
I’m certain
that you’ve even been
inside that same room
in the house of your in-laws
where the fire first was lit
by your now husband.
But I’ll never know
if you want to know.
My only fear
is that he’s doing it
to you now too.
Demi Wetzel’s work can be found in Broad! Magazine, Face á Face Collective, and her chapbook—Life of the Party— was chosen as a 2017 Floating Bridge Press semifinalist. She graduated from University of Southern Indiana located in the same city where she was born and raised. Demi now lives and writes in the U.K.
