GHAZAL FOR
THE A WORD

             with thanks to T

I say the A word until my friend calls me on it, asks Why won’t you say abuse?
Caesura in my testimony, I’m redacting in real time, cringing away from abuse.

In Iranian courts, two women’s words are worth the weight of one man.
In me are two women, one Iranian & one American, mouths open on the A of abuse.

I say If I say the A word, & my friend says it again, & I say Yes,
but what if I’m wrong                           & it wasn’t abuse?

My friend, a man I trust enough to trust a man, he says If you’re still so scared
you won’t even use the word — listen to the voice inside insisting it was abuse.

& it’s true, I do have those two women inside me, each of them the latest
in my lineage of violence & violations. Who better to recognize abuse?

Shame: I muted their voices years ago, muffled their wails against my own palm.
Shame: I need a man’s permission to call what I’ve survived abuse.

I say it for the first time that day, & I say it again to our other friends
             (even now, how many times have I said it and meant abuse?),

& then again in the courtroom, where my restraining order is dismissed for lack
of immediate physical danger after a ten minute hearing. It’s my abuser’s

word against mine, punctuated by a bullet hole in my front window
weeks later. Dead women don’t need defending from abuse,

but I let him kill me too many times before to die so easily again.
I write him into the grave he dug for me. I write abuse

in my red, red ledger; all my many names. Jaz to my friends, but he called me Ellie,
short for Aurielle, the first A word that taught me to flinch at its abuse.