Heavy Limbs
i. He fucks me on his couch. My legs are propped on the coffee table, left foot nudging a framed photograph of him and his wife on their wedding day. He is three times my age. Touches my skin like crumbling sunshine. I want to feel guilty, but I feel nothing.
ii. He pays for my coffee. His sweetly Spanish-softened tongue says feminism, adventure, click, cute, like a movie. Then he takes me to bed. Slides his belt around my throat. Good girl.
iii. Locked car doors and my hands a pale blue. “How about you make it up to me, hmm?” He cuffs my wrist in a rage-thickened grip. Spears my mouth and when he’s through, spits me, salt-streaked, onto the street corner. I don’t eat for three days. The acid of him eats holes in my skull.
iv. I feel the first strip of skin catch fire across my spine. He whips again. Waits for me to scream, but I don’t. I know better than to get between a man and his desire to make object of my body. I crawl home purpled across my back with a victory that tastes like losing between my gritted teeth.
v. I don’t want it. He knows I don’t want it. But we both quickly come to the understanding that he wants it and he has ninety pounds on me, so I had best step aside from my own skin. He fucks me like he is trying to twist a knife straight to my womb. The ropes of muscle in his heavy limbs creak. Two weeks later, the special victims detective explains to me that I should have left the room. I decline to press charges.
vi. We try to have a conversation, but find each other’s thoughts unpleasant, so we throw out our empty paper cups and take off our clothes instead. His sweat rivers down my neck. I think about frogs and Saint Catherine of Siena and the groceries in the fridge until he is ready to peel away from me. Block his number on the way back to Brooklyn.
vii. I try to to be gentle but am always making fists, scraping into blood and pulped flesh. I have dreams about bleach. Whiskey. Crucified wrists and pill bottles. I write lists and erase them and write them again. I want to feel guilty, but I feel nothing.
