The Shape of a Bruise

AUTHOR’S NOTE:

For everyone who told themselves—with eyes screwed tight, sweat coated down your neck— that everything was okay, when it wasn’t. For everyone who didn’t realize they were hurt for days, months, years and years later. Even when the bruises fade, the body remembers. Our bodies remember. 

They lied when they said ugly men couldn’t hurt you. This much I can wager. I know because he was shorter than me; weak as a newborn, slimy and still slick with his mother’s blood; face scarred and pimpled; eyes the color of mold. I’d told myself, delirious, that his eyes were beautiful. I kept repeating it to myself, later on, like it was a reason. Only now do I realize I had been trying too hard to find beauty where there was only ever a void, an emptiness so enticing it pinned me down—again and again and again. So they lied when they said ugly men couldn’t hurt you. I know. 

Sometimes I am in a house that is not his, in a room that is not his, watching from what seems like far away as he touches this body that is not his. In this memory I am in a car and it is not his car and a film of sweat is clinging to my skin. Afterwards, I will have to wring my underwear out in the sink of my teenage bathroom, but now, in the backseat, they are shackled at my ankles. He insists we keep the car’s air turned off. He really cares about the environment, he says, the polar bears are dying. Under the weight of his quivering bones, I forget how to cry. Mostly I am quiet. 

He had a lisp, except when he swore he didn’t. I would point it out, or he would catch himself in the act, and his teeth would clamp tight over his tongue. We would both pretend we didn’t notice. It’s those small things that I remember now: his lisp, the way he would sleep in his jeans, how he’d cry to get me to fuck him. When I look back all I see is rot.  Even the better moments have curdled like milk, a stench that clings to my fingertips. There is nothing salvageable there, no fond memory of this person I once claimed to love. But love is not a feeling, it is an act. Men like him understand many verbs— to hurt, to rape, to take— and love is not among them. Love is a word left out to expire, a weapon when it needs to be. 

I love you is what he says when he enters me, wields it like a knife against my throat.

While it happens it is okay, okay, okay. There is nothing wrong at all. I can see my breath against the sweating window, the flickering of light flushing my apartment, beckoning me through the dark; if I can make it out of this car without getting caught or vomiting, I think, if I can make it to the light, it will be okay okay okay. I close my eyes and pretend I cannot feel a dick puncturing me, skewering me. I think of nothing but the light and the state of my body, which feels nothing like my body and everything like a sack of someone else's flesh. Someone else’s pain. It is not a very precise pain, I cannot name the feeling. It is not even strong, like cramps or broken bones. Instead, it is a dull throb that pulses through every inch of me, drenches me, weighs me down. I cannot escape it, it is everywhere. 

I wish I was other people, better people. But if I saw him in a crowd I cannot promise that I would not think of yelling rape, or better, yelling fire. People would listen then. I cannot promise that I do not dream of him crucified, that in those dreams I am not hammering the nails into his palms myself.  Or maybe fire is better here too. I hear fire is always better. I hear burning is the worst way to die. Do not look at me like that. I know what it is like to bleed and to burn. And I am not a better person. I am not above savage things like vengeance or public spectacles or shame. Bring me his head, and I will crown it with thorns myself. This time there will be no redemption, only a lick of flame. 

It is hard to describe but I can try. It is this: Even my teeth ache. Even my toes go slack. My eyelashes hurt, my labia numb, my hips heavy. So I cannot escape it. So I look at the light and bite until my tongue bleeds and keep thinking that Gatsby was not right about a lot of things but he was right about some. I look at the light, pretend it is green, until it is blinding. Everything else is negative space. When it is finally done and heat is leaking out of me, I imagine I am face up in a pool, a bullet to the chest. At least this is a wound I can see. At least there is an entry and exit point. I know, I know. The irony is not lost on me. 

It’s kind of funny now, to think about it. I really could have killed him. Don’t tell me that I shouldn’t have. Because I didn’t, and I already know that. That does not mean I didn’t want to. 

In the morning I wake with a bruise on my hip. It is shaped like a memory. Which is to say it is shaped like another bruise.