“The Mean World,” by Lia Greenwell (Poetry ’13)

“The Mean World,” an essay by poetry alum Lia Greenwell, was recently featured in Waxwing. Read an excerpt below:

The Mean World

I’m riding in the car with my mother when she tells me that she has heard a new way women are being abducted into sex trafficking.

Say you’re in a mall bathroom and someone in the next stall asks for toilet paper. As you reach for their hand to pass some under the stall, they stick you with a fentanyl patch. You’re rendered unconscious by the dosage and hauled away.

I tell her I don’t think this is true. How would they remove your limp body without raising a few red flags? She says it’s what she read. I imagine Facebook is the source. She also tells me about how a woman was nearly abducted from Hobby Lobby after being followed in and out of the aisles.

Later I pull the threads of these stories to see where they lead. I search fentanyl patch, abduction, sex trafficking on the internet and find nothing. I search Hobby Lobby near abduction and find a debunked story from 2015.

I’ve become alert to how fear can operate as a flashing neon sign, a sort of GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS that draws our attention. Fear as warning but also entertainment, an adrenaline-surging what if.

Read the essay in its entirety here: http://waxwingmag.org/items/issue23/33_Greenwell-The-Mean-World.php