LEILA
.
.
I met her on a side street downtown, late one night, as I was walking home from another dead-end job interview.
I saw them first.
Three guys circled her and they looked drunk, leering .
Their words, rough and ugly, carrying on the damp night air, trying to corner her.
Trying to want to have s*x with her, the intent raw and disgusting in their eyes, in their stance.
Something snapped inside me and all the fear, all the helplessness, all the times I had been caught, trapped it surged into a cold, hard resolve.
I won’t watch of any it, Not again. Not to her. Not to anyone I could stop.
I didn’t think just so moved.
Ran at them, yelling, a sharp, raw sound pulled from my gut, threw myself into the middle of it.
I wasn’t strong, not like them.
My body still ache
