This is a letter to the man who pinched
my lawyer suited ass on Court Street.
This is a letter to the man who pinched
my ass as I climbed the subway stairs
with my nine year old daughter,
the man that ran away laughing.
This is a letter to the man on the subway
who made fucking gestures toward my crotch.
This is a letter to the tailor who fondled
my curves when I was forty one and then
stood in the doorway of his shop
watching me as I walked home with my children.
This is a letter to the tailor who stuck
his hand through the curtain when I was nineteen.
This is a letter to the ragged man who followed
me in the park across from the White House
and masturbated by rocking, when I was nineteen.
This is a letter to the man I danced with at a party,
who followed me to my rented room and asked me
to dance again with his penis hanging out of his pants.
This is a letter to my ninth grade creative writing
teacher who listened to dirty stories about me told
by the boyfriend who had just broken up with me.
I didn’t write for five years.
This is a letter to the girls
who whispered slut as I walked the halls of my
junior high school.
This is a letter to all the mothers
who said, he just teases you, steals your
cookies, because he thinks you are cute.
This is a letter to my younger self now I am no longer nubile
and go unnoticed, a freedom I am almost ready
to embrace, and now I know it was never a compliment.
This is a letter to tell my daughters when this happens
to you and probably it already has, there is one word
I want you to remember, one word to practice
saying to your beautiful face in the mirror,
one word and that one word is STOP.
Dana Robbins is the author of the book of poems The Left Side of My Life, published by Moon Pie Press of Westbrook, Maine. Her poem, “To My Daughter Teaching Science,” was featured by Garrison Keillor on the Writer’s Almanac. She is a committed feminist and a proud survivor of child sex abuse.