there's this bloodbath carrie

who bought plane tickets to cincinnati

and was like, i'm flying out! i didn't know how to say FUCK

NO

FUCK NO

I CAN'T STAND YOU ONLINE SO HOW CAN I STAND YOU FACE

TO FACE

so she met mike and he couldn't stand her either

and she was worse than annoying, she was pushy and verbally abusive

and would push me physically when no one else was around

push and pinch and jab

i heard years later that that was when her abusive fiancé left her

so i forgive some of that but

she kept telling me to feed mike peanut butter and kill him cuz she did not like

what she saw in him, the abuser bits

but i can choose my friends, okay

and when to leave them and i can decide

who to pity (like carrie)

so  mike comes home from the pacific northwest a year later, is it

after i dropped carrie off at the airport with cwome, was it

with a "never speak to me again, this was hell and you are hellacious

and i don't appreciate your physical fucking abuse and dependence on me for money

WTF crazy"

she'd spread this ludicrous story that I was plotting to kill mike

and he was like WTF CRAZY and i about killed myself with fear but he's like

we've been TIGHT we talk for hours every day for how long now

you woke me up for my seminars in seattle

told you that carrie wasn't just unstable

she's a bitch

that's a dangerous lie to spread so best cut that loss

anyway

she flew out here because she was crazy jealous and obsessed

cuz when i said josh chose me as his first she spent months asking what date

cuz she says she was his first

but here

see

fatso started beating me up and making me let boys rape me days after he said he loved me

because i'm ugly

josh chose me because he was in love with me and hurt me because

he said

i had to know he couldn't be in love with me because love destroys happiness

and

always told me

i was ugly

david started raping and hitting me in the mouth, and saying cruel things...

after he said he was falling in love with me

and the second time i met him was at his apartment crawling with flies and nothing but a mattress and their clothes all over the floor

and a $50 NYC couch, all metal with one PVC seat

NYC furniture for the impoverished, i swear

and he cried and cried and held me and said

she was beautiful on the outside and i was tripping him up

because he was falling in love with me because i'm beautiful on the inside

that i was the first girl he'd ever known who didn't make fun

of him for being mexican and who treated him well

and didn't make him feel poor

and then he made me cry by shoving her picture in m face

demanding that i tell him how beautiful on the outside

but all i saw was cold, murderous eyes and makeup hiding the cuts

on her face

ooooo gangsta

and then when weeks later i decided to let him kiss me so i could say

see

there's nothing there

the next night

the spanish

and the hitting

and eventually the i need her back because she's beautiful and you're not

joe never said i was ugly and

he hit me anyway

what makes the gloves

i've been trying to remember

did i delete donald's facebook message

saying that my very first rape, his fifth or something

now i know he was kicked out of clarke for raping young girls

was nothing, that i'm lucky i'm not iraqi

in the midst of

and i wonder why josh got so petulant as a 30-year-old mormon

so of course his morals apply only to his many baby sisters

and said that because he couldn't remember throwing me against the wall

over his shame that his first sex

me

was so exciting and nerve-wracking he lost his erection on the first thrust

even though it's probably why i destroyed myself

i was so

he wouldn't apologize for it

and jenny was all, that's bullshit

that's not even in the realm of an excuse

and i miss joe

so i was thinking of david because part of what made joe snap

was that i sent david e-mails but the more joe assaulted me the more

i tried to disappear into e-mails to david

i say i love abusers to try to erase the abuse and make things stop

so i was saying it to david but

it was so strange

david started abusing me because

he said something quickly and with his head downturned

on our seaport bench

before our fort greene bench

and asked, "what'd i just say?"

"i don't know, i can't figure it out...you went too fast"

"i was speaking spanish, stupid! you couldn't tell? stupid!"

but he had never

and it was the night

he said he was falling in love

psychiatry and its druthers

that is why i have decided

when the world is against you and the people who have all the strings

know

it becomes their power

your play

is taken from you floorboard by spotlight

and the disenfranchised

we are no longer committed to physical institutions

but the psychic lock and key

especially in the Deaf-world, so tiny

with ridor lightning-quick dispensing rules from "hey, tell..."

to "okay, tell..."

suffocates and the lights

go

--

(so there must be someone Deaf to sit there and agree

it is true)

...

i remember dorm b staff before i graduated

"we thought you lesbian what-up"

"why?"

"first night before freshman year we caught you in the tub with another girl"

oh, but that girl had a ferocious bite on her

already sent someone to have one treated

who says no when a threat is a bite after you've witnessed three assaults

and  two years later it turns out

she was sexually abused by both parents and their friends

"hahahahahahahahahahahahahaha so anyway i'm sorry but hey

it heartened back to innocent days, back to when we could just take baths with friends

right?"

"yeah, you didn't do anything weird, so

yeah"

sometimes

looking in is nonsense

and looking out is a trap

the bond severed, the bond oh-oh-seven

so mom is all

"your accusations are false and"

and i will not even! so we agreed no more mother and daughter

but i see someone must have told her something

she has backtracked a little on something

so even people who don't talk to her are talking to her and it gives her space

to change her stories

or she read the one thing i blogged and changed that story

but even

at ben's wedding i lamented to my second cousin faye

that we had become so distant i wasn't invited to her wedding

mom had been all GUESS WHAT TERRY AND BEN WERE INVITED TO FAYE'S WEDDING

YOU WEREN'T!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and faye, perplexed

she said you didn't want to come

didn't want a direct invitation

and i was in the bathroom sobbing because of course

mom was all OH NOES YOUR BROTHERS ARE DRUNK OH NOES

and i went and got drunk and couldn't walk cuz my ankle was so swollen

so max carried me back to my hotel room

and max is one reason i keep living

he tells me everything that goes on in 13-people christmas restaurants and rooms

but now he won't be marrying mem

so i

am a szymanski whole

not half a ward

but how can i lie about not lying

just to save nothing me

just to save a reputation and keep being drained

how could she tell faye

and laugh at me

how can she constantly

but joe

not santini

is getting varnished photos of the twins

and two of himself with messages from me on those backs

not on the twins' except "of all that we share/the nos delicious/the most cozy/the most wonderful/is our DADDY!" and the like

as postcards

his birthday is a week from now

i want to buy him a $50 gift certificate for plaza art

but if he or his mom would just throw it away

then $5

is okay to toss

i cannot leave him to feel unloved

so i think

i will ask tres belles to take my card number and ask

just down the street

if he would like to order himself a cake

(i think otherwise he will not get a cake

isn't that a whopping heartbreak)

i want to make these adorable monster scarves

for joe and the babies

and mail them for his birthday to play with now and use in earnest this winter

i have no way of knowing

they won't be thrown away

whether he has faced himself

whether he'll be single and normal in four years

i worry

the drones aren't being employed now, when the world needs them most

that four years will be a death sentence

i read the news every morning

and i blog only what hurts me personally

but the months have flown by with too many terrible precursors

not to wonder whether "see you in new york" predicts

the destruction is horrific, the carnage

we did this, we allowed this cultivation of evil

and we aren't stopping it--

for the love of humanity, the children

send in the drones

ain't nobody gon' be decrying the damn things now

all over the world and we can't realistically expect

to stay safe much longer

the heartbreak mounts

jolene, jolene, jolene, jolene

well

we just canceled each other out

i have been trying to get out for so long but i'm so sad

about joe

my body memory of joe went away with the coercion

and i have mostly been miserable but

not always

and i think we have canceled each other out with relief

so we can both leave

**
he got weird after i told him last month i do not want him romantically

and he's been weirdly manipulative about so much

i look at him incredulously when he tries to stick me with 100% of the work creating this business he wants to have

and he says "yer so smart you should do these bits, see"

but he is slowly relinquishing every bit of control and responsibility

and my body misses its memory of joe

**
doink, this was posted friday night but apparently not

i had to have this talk with you

jolene is a song

and now the wife and i have moved past

self-defense and accusation

she seems to believe he coerced me

but anyway

now i know what i've been suspecting

he's been using sweetheart tactics to steal

based on what he knows about david, hugo and joe

threatening to break my arm or kill me or my client

for money

he gets really angry and threatening when i say no and then pretends he didn't

and for reasons a bit complicated to blog

this is now about my mother, not the wife, mind

except that a mother is supposed to be able to help a fractured child figure out what's normal

and guide her (or him) away from abusive relationships

not push her toward them and say it's nothing to do

with mommy dearest

but she has been pushing me toward abusive men and destruction

since she laid eyes on clint

so i really won't be talking to her ever again

this is not the kind of mother who can ever help

the kind of mother who would force her daughter into a place

where either she is in danger of being raped or killed every day

or has to try to love a man

so she feels just that much safer every day

me: a supernova

two, maybe

every week or two i start packing for NYC

then it hits me 

the babies, so i have to stay

next week i start again in earnest to try 

joe might have to give permission but i can't not try

he doesn't have custody so he may not have that much authority

and if their mother approves, i think she trusts me, well, then!

i spend each morning and evening, at least, missing the babies

and joe

several times a week i cry once or twice a day 

down from a minimum of twice a day seven days a week

and most days i still cry

i miss them like they're mine

i love them like they're mine 

recognition software: retinal scans

i was a pushover

docile

reasonable in assessing personality flaws within each relationship

offering solutions

making leeway for insecurities on both sides and

implementing

respect

is my thing everywhere i talk

but he's been quiet for nearly a week (we text daily)

she's said i probably wasn't coerced and that i need therapy for still being friends if i truly believe it

because no way could someone sane

but keri had babies with hers

and that is a barometer not of crazy but of balance

and marci is fully aware and never liked mosi, never fucking trusted him

but this she has no real issue with

and this

too

but i was crying as i put down the jeans

(calvin kleins are so cheap today, not quality, and the spandex

makes them fit almost as badly as style&co, which creates

camel toe

and looks great high across the ass cheeks by pushing them down (my ass is curvy!) but makes an ass droop and

the denim bags underneath the cheeks)

so i e-mailed her the worst and i am not the type

i told her that if her husband can tell me time and again that her pussy tastes bitter and is not a high ranker, it's so rank

then he is perfectly capable of coercion

that if for six weeks he could text me all the time saying "trust me

i will break her

i will make her agree to an open marriage

we never have sex anymore anyway so it's only fair

oh, i've been at it, i will make it happen, just you watch"

then yes, when i say that that's not how i like my men

he is capable of coercion

but

who

is this petty tattletale

it is 29 years of being told i'm ugly

20 of being raped and fighting off rapists

and one

of knowing that the guy i would marry and raise kids with

is too dangerous

home is where the heart sinks

so when jeff raped me it was coercion

and he was holding me tightly but anyway

i was weeping and telling him again and again that i was not ready

that i still loved and cherished joe and the imprint in and on my body

see, david erased all the bad somehow with his body:

fingers, lips, tongue

his penis, never...he was terrible at sex and his penis was too soft to feel

except during the thre rapes

so

joe too imprinted me (they both kiss so nicely--)

and though he raped me the love seared only the good into lasting memory

and i kissed jeff, who is pretty good at it except for that damn habit lately of smashing teeth

but i did not want anything else and he dragged me into the bedroom

and as i reiterated half a dozen times that i was not ready and did not want to desecrate my body memory

he assured me that once we were having sex i would be ready

and because joe would strangle me into sex i was not quite sure

i could walk away without being hurt (now i'm sure)

i just cried and cried and tried to push his hands away but they are strong, i have screamed because of the pain and had my hip wrenched out of its socket twice as well as a bone bruise, and cussed him out several other times

and the last time, when he started yelling at me for screaming because of his death grip

i countered that the only reason he won prison fights

was his grip and that he would get kicked in the face the next time he tried that shit because

he does not stop hurting me

and he was the one taking off my clothes and gripping me too tightly to feel safe

but

though i've been crying about it for a week or so

about his surprising denial and refusal to discuss it

though after three days i told him it was enough and that he had raped me and that i was not willing to have sex again

though the reason we do now is sometimes because i fear what would happen if i just

not always, mind...it is just so confusing since i met david

because now i want to be kind, because i learned with david (with floyd and vincent in mind)

that being kind feels lovely because it is love

that rejecting someone before i can get hurt is not always necessary

that being kind when someone is threatening me, hitting me, raping me out of fear

is not weakness but strength: it is a moral code

like hitting and raping represent the opposite moral code

i understand that if we hadn't started having sex

i could have spent the next five years waiting for joe so devotedly

it would have turned out to be a waste

but i have run cold against jeff with certain observations

but worse

he knows joe admitted to raping me and then suddenly said that since everyone else was on his side

this was at the motel minutes before he threatened to leave me stranded and for dead if i didn't agree to everything he said

he would categorically deny the rapes and pretend he never had

(how stupid that he read all this aloud to the magistrate and then told her it was true! thrice she asked and thrice he asserted that that is how it went down in the motel room)

and this is how he is choosing to erase part of who i am

erase his maturity

erase the connection we forged and the trust i developed

why would his wife tell me he didn't really rape me when she has admitted that he spent years crazymaking

cheating

making her cry and doubt herself

isn't that the same package

and i am so over it

she is a total misogynist except where her own pussy is concerned

deigned deity, feigned fealty

it might be fantasy

but i think that if she and i had met either online or in person

it all would have been fine

i think

but it could be fantasy

we would have gotten along and she would have seen

it isn't what she fears

besides, who goes to swing clubs engaging in unprotected oral sex

and never gets tested for STIs? acting like it's reason for alarm or suspicion

especially with this supergonorrhea that is IN THE NEWS BECAUSE IT IS IN THROATS GALORE

and in the states

when a spouse wants to be sure you're both clean

is not rational

people are inane

but all the same

...yet, yet:

oh, the thickness plots...

for all the shit he's done to her

that i call him on

i have been shocked into crying jaunts that are hysterical and last five or six hours before i can move

paralyzed with PTSD and flashbacks

because her abusive approach is nothing short of insane

and he says, "oh, but she said, when she let me back in this morning before work, and i'm lucky i could sleep in the laundry room, but my back is sore, 'you know i locked you out overnight because of my past' and i totally understand that, that's not a big deal"

and shit

but it terrifies me for days on end

that a misspent $20 escalates into physically fighting a spouse out of his or her own home

the more i've heard the more i've had to insist that it triggers my PTSD and leaves me tachy and unsure of the entire world

of even my healthiest friends' healthiest marriages

worrying that an apple slice on a floor can turn into a beating

in the sweetest of loving gazes

but she just e-mailed me my full name, my DOB, my address, my gender

so i wrote back clarifying that she is insane

and asked if the point was to come kill me at my home

the drusilla in me

this is what years of sexual, physical and emotional abuse can do

i recognize myself less and less, and sequestering myself from assholes

who say i must admit i'm lying, and on top of that allow them to call me ugly if i want to be Deaf

and from my creepy family and sociopathic mother

has been great--until

david started hitting me because it goes RIGHT BACK to fatso

right the fuck back

i have never, not once

been really jealous, and i never talked to any of the "other women"

it just seems to me that life is life and life is long and humans suck at fidelity

but maybe it's because i know joe (not santini)

really, besottedly, with idolatry and what little he could afford

loved me

i just wrote jeff's wife back

and somehow it feels like a relief

but

who am i

defrost works its dripping way

else i can never explain to marci--

so the counter is slowly pooling.

the facade of marble.

the thirty seconds i took to tell a student he was smarter than he tried to bully his adult classmates into thinking

crushed another, i think--i hadn't said "smartest," but "smart"--

but i logged hours with the others

walked home for a good cry in between coffeehouse sessions

was late, late for one heartbreak, but it gets lost

all that suffering, abuse i narrowly escaped because mom was like

this is my offspring, my DNA, so catch ya on the positive attitude or the principal will have your hide after i take hers, yo!

and it is just thirty seconds

that memory of david twisting my arm so i could feel it creak to break

just like ty, recreating rape scenarios i had entrusted to false love

threatening that i never tell his mother he was visiting, staying with me

like, what fantasy world

and oh can he borrow $150

sure, it's cheaper than a broken arm

but it never lets me rest

once i say something they each feel is far too intellectual to comprehend or be anything but an insult to their conscience, nay, existence--

i am made all too conscious

snap peas in a cool broth

people get scared of the thirty seconds i snap and tell them that six or seven years, or twelve, of shitty attitude, entitlement specifically, has got to go. anytime i judge, i remind myself i can't possibly

except in cases of abuse and misogyny...i tell you, had virgin me known that any of the boys i cuddled were interested, saying yes to dating darryl wright would have changed my life, but i don't talk about the past i never had, but not one of them was openly misogynist. deaf white men seethe at the privilege hearing white men have. fatso, by the way, was one of the worst i've ever met, and the fakest. everybody knew he was basically hearing. choosing to devastate and eviscerate me as a hobby was not something he stumbled onto.

oh, from the very start he was like, "follow my arbitrary rules and you will never be hurt, because you write better poetry than i do, and never write stories or attempt that novel, since you're too shitty at understanding men to make a dime."

i know the face of evil, and the devil is companiable. need butter? his tongue is made of the stuff.

but his first kiss, well. I know it was from before. it was my first, too, my first consensual kiss.

i could sit across from floyd and laugh and chat, and lay out each flashback tarot

separate the men again, categorize each, rate his rapes and

extract

and frame

any happinesses

and they got their own armory

the sanguine

from the sanguinary

floyd was the gladiator

between me and the abbatoir

(and i wonder

my god, john-boy had a huge crush on me

i never had so much fun that year

as when i was with him

why do we shrink and expand when we do

i, i

because the time never would have been right

to turn, flushed, back

after he raped or hit me--

for all i knew)

losing floyd

was not so much the problem

that has had overlasting consequence

but me listening to ilene

"if you tell him you were raped he will never speak to you again; trust me. he's a man"

i lost me once i lost my path

sometimes ilene sucked is all

she said

"he's your truest friend, strike that, your only true friend"

so i have never understood

the confluence:

how it all began

i've been thinking of the brit

way up by the nob hill hotel

38

"you need to disown your family. i disowned mine; i was homeless for nearly a year

no one had prepared me for life and once i was at the precipice they abandoned me

worse

told me i was shit and that i deserved nothing better

when i was 32 i really made it, i have an amazing career

but looking back i know exactly what they did and they won't get a dime"

so i've been thinking back on who's really family

bianca sticks out and i bet chanda would pinkie-initiate her

into a trio

cha loves a good smart laugh so wry

but how it started was a very awkward outing in her red car, was it a toyota

i will never forget certain drives and neither will she

we were shocked at the other's clarity

that we both felt a connection the other apparently didn't and kept it secret

silent all these years

but one we really laugh about was the hours wasted trying to drive past this house at two circles in northwest d.c.

thwarted by the circles and thrown back into the figure 8

and one day on AIM

turn on the TV beth

oh my god it's the house at the circle

on house hunters do you fucking remember--

omigod yes every few times you tried to drop me off at my house omigod

and we would always freak and promise not to get as stuck looping da loop like the first time 

deft strokes of the ASL kind

i always see things i want to tell bianca about

show her

and i tell people about our museum imagination

the special exhibits we will have traveling the united states

the number of people who recoil at our scratch'n'sniff exhibit

but why shrink at the violet of pussy? the orchid rorschach that cannot be seen

ah, she is the best

and a few days ago i woke up and looked in the mirror after my shower

oh, i wished i could text her--she would have been able to crack up over the hair that had sprouted overnight, a thin white hair that had "old age" stamped all over it--

--it had sprouted between my eyebrows and formed a 1.5"-long C curling down to where my glasses bridged--between my eyes!--

and bianca would have had a great, brutally honest calculation at the ready

of the emotions and thoughts

culminating

in a pluck

bianca on the brain

it's funny how dismissive i am

shrugged about it to marci: "bianca's an asshole because her divorce fractured her, and being unfeeling toward others is morally bankrupt, especially when you're smart enough to understand

(mind," laughing, "it is her blonde moments that give us some of the best laughs: she once spent hours yelling, crying and googling the absent instructions on the paas dye packets, and jenny and i kept marveling, 'but aren't the instructions on the back of each packet?' and finally, after the googling produced a consensus that kept her from really flipping her lid, she's all, 'oh...they're on the back of each packet!' but, to be fair, that's a typical freak-out, losing sight of the keys in your pocket. so, yeah,  you know, she's not a dumb blonde, but she thinks i think she is. big problem, hovering between us, elusive because we're tugging at war: no, yes!)"

and i mentioned to marci

how necessary it is to detach when someone's moral values are so screwed up i can't handle them in my own life. how i'm sure bianca will be back, and she'll view a certain decade as her distortion, and we all have one, and

hopefully understand what i'm protesting, not bianca

but her swell of anger, its inflammation of her joints, how it meshes with her fear

and. i'm just not thrilled with the way she treats people since she first felt thwarted at love

faced with so much love it made her blind

and, my god, i can imagine ty being one of the core issues--i made it very clear that his heartless shapeshifting and the legions of fallen women who had been the heroines of their own stories--he was specifically targeting her, and when he mocked--well--her feelings and conclusions...

...i lasered blue-hot. just white blasted to cooling edge. and i don't regret choosing jenny and bianca over santini and ty. women come first, and women are shitty to each other mainly because of creepy andrists. but...some things she did during my visit were unconscionable. ed is someone I have serious issues with but consider a lifelong friend, a true pal, one who really understands life and loves freely as an old geezer. plus i could see that bianca was being taken for a ride. that flirtation was solely for the chase, and this asshole was anti-men, gleaming and glowing, glowering at me for my ugliness

I have no reason to accept bianca as she is as a human being; my rosacea and weight gain aren't good reasons for her to allow someone to ask why she's friends with an uggo like me. just, no. calculations of life: consensus: no.

i have no reason to respect her anymore. she's beyond ugly on the inside right now. when she deigns to return to a balanced state, stop doing a half-assed job of PSE-teaching ASL, which is a no-no, not a "personal style" thing. NYC is full of PSE signers, PSuEdointellectuals at that, and i sign differently now too, but in the classroom

snap to attention

or your degree is shit and your integrity so liquid it's on the toilet seat

and i think it's a reflection of her attitude toward life

i have anger issues too and they're getting shitty but

and then she went on this screaming rant the entire cab ride to the met

raving

maniacally verbally abusing me for forcing her to feel guilty

and me constantly, calmly replying

"i'm on vacation. you were two hours late. we don't have a lot of time. i'd rather relax and catch up in a cab i'm paying for on vacation from work. i've got the money, you don't need to stress, i'm annoyed by the timeline but i'm totally rolling with it. you locked me out last night, i found a hotel room at 5:30, i left early to meet you...i'm not gonna let you scream at me for wanting a cab. i have one afternoon before my flight today. let's just have fun"

and then her raging at me for being guilted into paying $40 for two tickets

her friend the asshole had even said it after i kept hammering it home

$20 recommended donation

it says on the sign

"it's free! go! no, the met is free!"

dozens of heads turning at her frenzy, foaming at the bit: "no! i damn well will pay! you get to writhe and feel like a shithead while i dip into my empty pockets and pay to even out the cab fare! i hope it was worth it! i hope you feel miserable knowing i've got enough of a conscience to pay to even things out!" just about crying with bile

"yes, you feel embarrassed right now, don't you, hah, this is exactly what you need, that's right! i'll embarrass you at the met and i don't care! you're trying to guilt me today and i'll make you feel the brunt of it! you're standing here watching me lose it! and! that's! just! what i'll give you, the satisfaction!"

lurid in the face of my pointing finger: "but, look, that's the beauty of it, see, it's right up there:"

i hope her heart shat a little when she read

"met under fire for trying to enforce $20 admission fee; met is fucking rich and doesn't need..."

in am or metro

or over ed's shoulder

but i figure

everybody snaps

reconstructing the flecks

in hawaii the sky curves so the stars

dimple at waves of length

it is a universe proper at night

and this reflects*

*reflex

the reliquaries we stuff

he told me yesterday

i'm still marveling

he was, too, as a child

and as i was

rote, but from the heart

"i'm so sorry you went thr--"

he was mirroring my me

saying

"nipples!

breasts!

areolae!

mons pubis!"

and this is something Deaf people tend not to understand

but all my hearing friends do

just because you mention it doesn't mean it's a whole production

it doesn't require tissues or a fucking sad cake

or hours of hand-wringing or painstaking detail

sometimes it just has to be said and it is said to let it be

and it's still necessary to acknowledge, to hear, to consecrate

and sometimes (you can always tell when) someone has yet to be validated, stood up for, cried for

fiercely loved and torn into with a firebrand of "you are not to

atlas

this asshole event or your asshole faux pals"

but i laughed and acknowledged

"okay, you really wanna fuck me"

but

all this time

he's been on my side, ripping into men, telling me they connive

destroy

just for the male of it

and once held me ravaged with rampant tears just tight and sweet and soothing

"go ahead, cry some more"

and after wetly, thickly: "i never had this with joe

and i wish i had fun sex to remember

but half the time he'd start

hitting me

still inside me

for 'cheating' and 'not loving him'"

so

if a man knows and was, too

but refrains from saying so

and is on our side, women

then there is fight

down to the very last sliver

of flint