Matthew, Jonathan, Gillio,
Winston, and Diego,
Scott K and Scott N
They call them the Cornell 7,
But there were others-
More than 57 young men.
More than 57 sons of women.
More than 57 young lives
full of endless possibility.
Future captains of industry,
and pillars of society.
Engineers, doctors,
senators, lawyers.
Husbands of wives.
Fathers of daughters.
Men of privilege,
promise, and infinite potential.
I mean, texting ‘free pussy’
does sound
very presidential.
7 men in the room,
57 in the chat.
And what did Jane Doe do after that?

Fight, flight, freeze,
fawn and flop,
flood, and flock.
The 7 well known types
of trauma response,
But there are others-
More than 57 ways
to process the pain
and make it through the days.
I have gone through each and every one of them
every. single. morning.
Because the algorithm has
no trigger warning.
For days on end I moved
through every F-ing word in the trauma book
until I finally found the one that took
this time: Forcefield.
A protective ring of silently seething rage.
I put the sensitive sections of my brain back in their cage.
I put the cold, unemotional, brick wall back
up around each memory of abuse, assault, and attack.
There are more than 7. Many more than 7.
And I shut tight the spigot of empathy
for each other person
who has confided in me,
and shared their own abuse story,
and spoken to me of why and how
they are daily reminded,
and re-traumatized now.
Again. Yet again.
More than 7 women and more than 7 men.
We are many more than 57.
And what will we do after this?