Content Warning: This poem contains scenes of hunting, violence and sexual assault.

I went with you.

It was what you most loved to do,

you said.

You didn’t tell me that your favourite thing to do was to hunt.

I didn’t know this until you pulled the gun out of your car,

beckoning me to follow you to the forest.

I assumed it was just for protection,

that the part of the forest you were taking me to had dangerous wildlife.

I didn’t know that you were the one that was dangerous.

You motioned for me to crouch down a bit behind a tree.

I did so with the feeling that nothing good would come of this.

We waited and I could hear you breathing.

It became more excited when you saw a deer through the trees,

and you held your gun at the ready.

When you pulled the trigger,

the air broke around us.

I watched as the deer fell to the forest floor and you let out a sound of excitement,

something I had never heard escape past your lips.

It was not a sound you made when you looked at me.

You watched the fallen deer for a few moments,

a hungry look in your eyes,

and you began to walk away.

“You aren’t going to do anything with it?”

I asked you,

unable to keep the anguish I felt a secret.

Even the trees that surrounded us could hear it in the sound of my voice,

my own emotions betraying me.

“It’s dead,”

You told me.

“The thrill is in the hunt. I don’t do anything with the meat.”

I looked at you for a moment,

wondering if I had ever known you at all,

and walked towards the deer,

ignoring the sounds of protest you made.

The deer stared up at me,

still alive.

I kneeled down beside the deer and placed my hand on its brow above its eyes,

trying to give it light so that its last moments weren’t of darkness.

“I’m sorry,”

I kept saying this over and over again,

“I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry,”

hoping that the deer could hear my mantra and let go of its tether to this world.

The deer let out a final breath and I watched as its spirit left its body.

You walked over to me through the grass.

I could hear your footsteps whispering louder with each step you took towards me.

Words could not leave my mouth,

caught between my lips,

as you grabbed my hand and took me back towards your car.

You drove me home and when we got into my apartment,

I could see the heat in your eyes as you looked at me.

They were alive with the fire I had seen in the forest,

before you pulled the trigger and the deer fell to the grass.

You began pressuring me for sex.

I was afraid of you and kept refusing you,

but every time I did,

that look of want increased until the fire was alive in your eyes,

as did your demands for satisfaction which I continued to deny.

By the time you overpowered me,

handled me like a piece of meat as if I was that deer you had killed,

holding me down on the bed and climbing on top of me,

there was no chance that I could overpower you,

much as I tried to.

You took what you wanted because I was no longer human to you.

The fire within you burned my skin and left me scarred,

fragile and a little broken.

Afterwards,

you sat there with a smirk on your face as if you had conquered a great beast.

I lay beside you,

thinking of that deer looking up at me.

I was filled with an emotion that I could not name,

and two words repeated inside my head:

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

I wasn’t sure whether I was apologizing to the deer,

or to myself.