Sexual violence as taught to me by 2009 Wattpad romance
and when it happens to you
in a club bathroom/house party/dark
street, your love interest will
tear you from your perpetrator’s grasp,
beat the violence from him,
save you
then hold you,
like a mouth holds air.
The perpetrator disappears,
returns to shadowed corners,
never again
seen at the dinner table
or beside you in a classroom.
The fantasy is not
in the absence of violence,
but the simplicity of it.
You are just too
desirable. Irresistible.
The fantasy is not in absence but
the idea that someone will help
stop it.
Everything is just
and we all move on.
*
Rose Ramsden is writer based in Surrey, UK. Her work has been previously published by bathmagg, Propel, 14Poems, and rejected by many more. She has a masters in Creative Writing: Poetry from Royal Holloway and a BA in English Literature with Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia. In 2024, she was a winner of Switchboard’s 50 Year Anniversary Poetry Competition. You can find her on Instagram @RoseRamsden.
