a list of things i cannot forget in the wake of the kavanaugh hearings

or: an ode to christine blasey-ford

originally published by The Stay Project (now defunct)

- i cannot forget the way my middle school counselor addressed the boys at my public
school as the future heads of households while neglected to speak to the girls at all
- their smiles were loose, and their eyes crinkled because they did not expect to hear
anything less
- i cannot forget the community of anger in these thirteen-year-old girls and how our
fingers curled underneath our sweaters
- it was wintertime, you see, and it was cold and there was no space for a male science
teacher to tell my friend that her shorts were skanky, as he had before
- we were thirteen
- i was thirteen
- upon meeting with said guidance counselor he asked me, ‘if your car broke down, would
you expect your mother or your father to pull over and fix it?’
- i said my mother, her father had taught her the intermediates when she was my age, so
she would know
- he smiled at me
- i cannot forget the way his white teeth shone because i had not answered correctly and he
expected nothing less his mind would not be changed
- two years before on the school bus a boy grabbed his crotch and wiped it on my shirt
- i had my earbuds in
- i did not know what was going on
- i cannot forget the way he called me a bitch and i cannot forget

- how all i had done was sit there and exist
- sit there and be a woman
- a woman for the sake of their laughter
- i cannot forget how i feel as if i am always a woman for the sake of someone else
- my law teacher freshman year told us all he didn’t believe women should be able to serve
in the military
- “i could send my sons off any day, gladly. but if i had a daughter? i would never let her
go. i couldn’t.”
- i cannot forget the way they slaughtered hillary and the way they tore apart her pantsuits
and her tight smiles and her age
- i cannot forget the way she bore it
- once again a woman for the sake of their laughter
- with no choice otherwise i cannot forget it
- the day before the 2016 election i asked a group of guy friends to stop using the c word
around me because i didn’t like to hear it and i was effectively made the laughingstock
and that was fine i didn’t have to be their friends anymore
- i didn’t need to surround myself with that i have every right to my own comfort
- i cannot forget the way one of them apologized, a smile tugging at the corner of his
mouth
- i did not believe it but somehow i managed to trust it
- the day of the election i turned my phone on after lunch and
- i cannot the way my phone vibrated in my hand, messages streaming in from a number i
had never seen before, the way my heart crawled into my chest the way this number was

telling me to kill myself for being a feminist that the way i am was because my father is
not in my life that i am mentally challenged that i am a pawn to be laughed at that i am
worth absolutely nothing
- i remember calling my mother and begging her to pick me up from school because i
could not continue to be here
- i cannot forget his apology just twenty-four hours before
- the boys told the administration later it was just meant to be a joke
- something they could laugh at, i suppose
- i cannot forget the way i justified it all to myself, that i would be able to walk into school
the next morning and look them in the eyes knowing full-well there would be a female
president-elect for the first time in history
- i cannot forget the way hillary lost just hours later
- i can never forget sometimes that i am a woman for the sake of their laughter
- “indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter”
- “the uproarious laughter between the two and their having fun at my expense”