Warning: This article include details of sexual assault and may be triggering for some readers.
Singer and musician ‘Halsey’ (real name Ashley Nicolette Frangipane) stood on stage in front of thousands at the New York City Women’s March on Saturday and, instead of a speech, she delivered a heart-wrenching poem that left the world reeling.
“I don’t really know how to do a speech unless it rhymes,” the 23-year-old Badlands singer from New Jersey told the crowd.
Her poem A Story Like Mine describes in vivid detail her own experiences of sexual assault – experiences to which too many women can relate.
here is my entire “A Story Like Mine” poem from today’s #WomensMarch2018 in NYC tw: rape / assault. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/l3fji73woM
— h (@halsey) January 20, 2018
Facing the crowd, Halsey defiantly described her anguish as she waited at a Planned Parenthood clinic with a friend who’d been raped. They were scared the rape had resulted in a pregnancy.
You see, my best friend Sam was raped by a man that we knew ‘cause he worked in the after-school program
And he held her down with her textbook beside her
And he covered her mouth and he came inside her
So now I’m with Sam, at the place with a plan, waiting for the results of a medical exam
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She told of being sexually assaulted as a child:
I’m too young to know why it aches in my thighs, but I must lie, I must lie
And she recounted how her former boyfriend would force her to have sex, under the impression she couldn’t say ‘no’ because he’d treated her to dinner.