The entire poem by Kelan, poet and sister extraordinare. (forgive the line breaks, they never seem to cooperate with me)
Green River Eyes by Kelan Koning
Her eyes are like yours he says, scratches his forearm, looks from the television to your knees, then back again. They?ve found her, they?ve found her by accident, laying ground for a new development in King City with a name like Prospect Park.
In the dream you are holding her journal but it is your journal and it is the future that is not your future and there is a man who is not your father and is your father and you just want to wake up.
The newscaster seems unsure how to look, knowing a few minutes later she will have a human interest piece about a dog who rescued his owner by dialing 911. Balance; the orchestration is crucial. Above her right shoulder the picture of this girl, this girl who was once alive.
Here, let me take your picture, the man on the bicycle said. I love the way you look in that dress, smiling, the free way you walk, i want some of your freedom, did i say that out loud, i can?t pay you anything but you can have the prints, that?s it, smile for me, why does your smile look forced, why don?t you smile like that for me, come by next week and pick them up, there?s a good girl.
It is a school picture. You know she stood in line for at least half an hour to have it taken, and her lips are pressed into an awkward arch indicating the photographer had said she would look prettier if she smiled. But your gaze goes straight for her eyes, the hue barely detectable from the small frame, her eyebrows unplucked and half-hidden by carefully-curled bangs.
Would you like me to rape you he said at the stoplight, flashing his signal, the boy with the hairnet and too much Aqua Velva, and you answered in the way you had grown accustomed to, there isn?t enough time.
You search, transfixed, for a message in those eyes, something to take away, something to pass on, but there is only your father?s scratching, a commercial, your bare knees.
Your words, stay with me..."When one of us, as women, is violated, it stirs those more subtle violations we have survived." It takes me back to some passage I remember, about the smallest battles in our lives sometimes being the most significant...because we initially sum them up and pass them over...for years...until some realization later makes us look at those small events, what had become small bricks in our foundation...and see them in a completely different way...
there is information on the green river killings here, http://www.karisable.com/grevilocaor.htm
I was 9 and my sister was 11 when the missing girls started popping up in the pacific northwest, I remember sitting in the living room and my father telling us that one of the victims looked like us - she had our eyes. That memory stuck with me and haunted me. I secretly would suspect my father years later and was greatly relieved when someone else would be arrested for this crime with DNA evidence to back it. I love this poem as it chronicles growing up fearful and female, forever vulnerable because of what lies between the knees... that when one of us, as women is violated, it stirs those more subtle violations we have survived.
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