La Luna

For the Co-Madres of El Salvador

She sits naked on a wooden chair. The specks of wood in her ass
bother her less than the black t-shirt that has been torn into four
pieces; one piece for her eyes, one for her hands behind her back,
two tie her feet to the chair. She cannot see the windowless
basement, the roaches that scatter across the floor, the three
policemen who stand in front of her. She can hear their zippers
slide open, feel her legs shake when their rifles hit her chair.
Tell us the names of the women. She lifts her head, thinks of the
pictures they had shown her on the wall, pictures of her friends,
companions, the women whose sons, husbands, had been given
electric shocks to the head, shot in the back, decapitated;
the women who were fighting to stop the disappearances. To you
they're all named Maria, she thinks. She says nothing. She hears
a pair of boots clunk closer. The man's breath smells of tequila
as he whispers in her right ear, You, you are like la luna,
the moon, with all its holes. The men untie her feet, lift her
from the chair, throw her to the ground. One man holds her
legs open, another takes his rifle, thrusts it into her vagina.
Her body slides with the dirt on the cold cement floor. Their hard
penises scrape the walls of her bleeding vagina, rip open her anus.
The moon hears her cries.

by E. M. Soos