Another Girl
by Kaylee Starke-Meredith
Ithaca College
Kaylee Starke-Meredith is currently a sophomore at Ithaca College, where she is a writing major. She is originally from Sharon, Vermont.
Another Girl
They say cover your drink, don’t show too much
skin,
stay in a group.
Don’t let it happen
to you, they say, make sure that it happens
to another girl, to someone else.
When it happens,
I am not fully aware of it
of his voice in my ear, murmuring
‘you should smile more,’ his lips
on my face, his body covering mine, smothering
their warnings, their trite advice.
Later,
he apologizes by the vending machines, and I force a smile
say it's ok
It wasn’t all his fault; I didn’t
say no.
I wash my sheets
again and again, but some things don’t come out
in the wash.
To another girl,
I say you didn’t have to say no, that didn’t make what he did ok,
not saying no is not a yes.
I tell her that what happened
wasn’t her fault, that she shouldn’t have to cover
her drink or be careful
of what she wears or fear
the dark.
Shouldn’t have to cater to him
just to feel some semblance of safety.
By the vending machines, he hugs me
and for a second his scent makes me dizzy,
takes me back to the night
before, reminds me of where
all these bruises have come from.
To another girl
I say that the bruises were not a result of her own negligence
To myself
I say forgive him.
Interview With The Author
1. What was your inspiration for this piece?
This piece was inspired by something that happened my freshman year of college. Afterwards, I was having a conversation with a friend and she asked me if I would be talking about it the same way (I was kind of dismissing it) if it had happened to another person, which is what I was thinking about when I wrote this. I wrote this for a poetry class that I am taking during a unit focused on lineation, so I wanted to play with the lineation a bit to add more tension and layers to the piece.
2. What is your creative process?
I have a very sporadic creative process. Sometimes I am able to just sit down and write something, and other times I have a really hard time coming up with anything. I try to write down any ideas that I might have even if I'm not working on anything at that moment so that I can come back to them when I feel more inspired or if I have a poetry assignment coming up.
3. What are some influences on your artistic process?
I really love poetry with intense imagery. Joy Harjo and Sylvia Plath are poets that I look up to because their works have such vivid imagery, which I always try to include in my own work. I also try to read as much as I can, both fiction and poetry, and I think I am influenced by what I am reading a lot of the time.
4. Is there anything more you’d like our readers/viewers to know about you or your work?
Thank you for reading my work! I am so excited to have it published in Quirk. I try to write about things that will be meaningful to myself and others, and this poem especially means a lot to me. I hope that others who have gone through similar experiences will be able to see themselves in this and be able to process their experiences, as writing this piece has helped me to do.