Micheala

“This was locker-room banter, a private conversation that took place many years ago. Instead of apologizing, he dragged it from the bus to the locker room, another place inaccessible to women. He never said it was supposed to be different, only said it was supposed to be private. He intended to keep us out, we were never meant to hear. He was not sorry for what he said, just sorry he was caught. Trump sounded like someone I knew. I just start kissing them. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. “I kissed her,” Brock said. “And you didn’t ask her permission before you kissed her, did you,” my DA said. “No,” Brock said. I moved on her like a bitch. “I kissed her cheek and ear,” Brock said. “I touched her breasts. I moved her dress down.” Grab ’em by the pussy. “I took off her underwear . . . and then I fingered her.” I did try and fuck her. We live in a time where it has become difficult to distinguish between the President’s words and that of a nineteen-year-old assailant.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name: A Memoir

“But time passed and eventually my mind had only one thought in it as regards childhood. For any kid that gets that as an option: take that sweet thing and run with it. Hide. Love it so hard. Because it's going to fucking leave you and not come back.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Demon Copperhead

“It may seem strange that people who have already attained a position of power through violence invest so much time in justifying their plunder with words. But even plunderers are human beings whose violent ambitions must contend with the guilt that gnaws at them when they meet the eyes of their victims. And so a story must be told, one that raises a wall between themselves and those they seek to throttle and rob.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Message

“They seemed angry that I’d made myself vulnerable, more than the fact that he’d acted on my vulnerability.”
― Chanel Miller, Know My Name