Cover Photo: Photo by Vincent/flickr
Photo by Vincent/flickr

Frozen Ground: On Reporting a Statutory Rape Twenty Years Later

“I wonder if we’re all self-possessed marionettes, our strings on the inside.”

Imagine your body ethereal, floating up to the ceiling, moving around the corners of the room.

Look:

Mother, gonna take your daughter out tonight

Father, gonna show her the power

statutory rape

.

Someone should’ve protected you,

Maybe a different girl’s parents caught him in bed with their under-aged daughter? Maybe he put a man in the hospital?

Purple HazeYeah, that’s who I am.

rape crisis services,I’m not the kind of person who calls a rape hotline.

I want to do this for me.

Wanderer

Wanderer’s

Jennilie Brewster’s paintings and installations have been shown in museums and galleries around the country. Her fellowships include the Ucross Foundation, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center’s Swann Fellowship for a writer who’s also a painter. As director of OPEN DOORS, she works with hospital residents to improve their lives and inspire action for safer, more just communities. She is writing a book about landscape and trauma. You can visit her at jenniliebrewster.com