After The First Black Eye

After the First Black Eye

1. She calls to say she still loves him, despite the fresh black eye turning ripe like a blackberry stain on the left side of her face.

On the phone people can usually hold themselves together but you’ve begun to notice in person she’s started to carry herself like an ancient map that already knows Pangaea will crack apart at the slightest wrong touch. She is Pangaea. And you know that if they have enough time together, he will break her.

2. On her bedroom wall there is a yellowed article about a boy who was dragged from the water of a harbor by the fisherman who saw him jump over the railing and below the ship. There is a reason for him jumping, and the reason is some sort of sadness. Everyone knows it is there, but no one wants to bring it up. The same is true with the bruise on her right hip, blooming like a cactus flower in all the wrong colors. Everyone else pretends it’s only a tattoo.

3. She calls to say she still loves him, and you try your best to tell her that love does not leave birthmarks born from a fist. The rain falls in whatever shape it wants to, always believing the ground will soak it up and never turn it away. She falls in love with him despite every hit, always believing one day his hands will form the right shape and cup her face instead of turning it away with a slap too.

4. Salmon spend most of their early years in rivers before swimming out to sea to live their adult years, and every time she phones, you will keep telling her to swim away too, to reach the calmer currents but she will always find her way back to him no matter how many times he batters her body against the rocks.

5. You have done your best, and she has too. Whatever happens next, whether she finally manages to swim out to the sea or he keeps her captive downstream, those bruises will always be entirely his fault. They came from his skin; she never wanted them on hers and neither she nor you will ever be to blame for the pain she was forced to endure.