TRIGGER

In the wake of a life-altering night, a gay teen in the British Isles fights for survival, closure, and justice.

Jay Walker awakens in a park covered in blood and bruises; he was drugged and raped, but shadows cloak his memory of what happened. He and his boyfriend, Jackson, were at the club. Why did Jackson leave him? Why won’t he answer Jay’s messages? “Stats help me understand,” Jay says in his first-person verse narrative, but they offer the grim likelihood that someone he knows was responsible. Still, these numbers are only “maybes and possibilities”: Jay needs to know the truth. Confused by his boyfriend’s behavior, he goes to Jackson’s house, where he finds evidence that leads to even more questions—a Mac and a Rolex. How could a boy with a struggling single mum afford these expensive items? The poems’ short lines capture the fragmented nature of Jay’s memories and the frantic frustration of his feelings. As Jay recovers physically, his parents and his best friend, Lau, surround him with support, but Jay feels out of place in his old life. He grapples with fear, shame, self-doubt, questions of identity, and his understanding of love. Therapy and a support group play important roles in his journey toward confronting what happened and discovering how to keep living. Most characters are cued white.

A survivor’s story portrayed with honest heaviness and caring vulnerability.