After binging MAY I DESTROY YOU in 3 days

By KB

Multiple things can be true at once. Like me, 
still messing up the title of this show & it being 
the best thing I’ve witnessed in years. Like me, 

being a survivor, still being scared to say 
the word rape, & it being the defining 
experience of my 20’s. Would you believe me if 

I said there’s life to live after loss? Would it make 
sense to be serious yet less sympathetic to shittiness 
after a 40-minute episode you have to talk about 

during this week’s session of therapy? Before 
I was a survivor I couldn’t have been a woman. Before 
a tree drops its first set of acorns, some are already considered

rotten. Before I had queerness I was a kid, waiting 
on all restroom stalls to be vacant before exhaling. 
I remember nothing but the feeling after that forced, 

compliancy apology. Hurt people hurt people 
is a really weird way to say rape. I remember ditching 
the scene, humming the anxiety away with a song. Maybe 

MAY I DESTROY YOU feels more accurate to the experience. 
Maybe the song in my most haunted memories sounds like
better run / to the ark / before the rain starts. 

KB is a Black queer nonbinary miracle. They are the author of the chapbook How to Identify Yourself with a Wound (Kallisto Gaia Press, 2022), winner of the 2020 Saguaro Poetry Prize. Follow them online at @earthtokb.

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