RED LINES

1 • K

THE FIRST TIME I TOUCHED HER WAS WHEN SHE ENDED UP ON MY FRONT LAWN.

Her eyes were cloudy. Her mind wanted to scream, but her body was shielding the sound. The streetlight made her skin, her clothes, her shoes look yellow. The greens of her eyes were overpowered by the red flowing from her waterline. She was heavy, even with her skin sticking to her bones. She wasn't unconscious, but she wasn't conscious either. She smelled like booze and grass and roses. She wouldn't look me in the eyes. She looked at the ground, the sky, the trees, the water, but never at me.

Everybody says "Don't judge a book by its cover." But you can tell a lot about the story by looking at the cover. If you see a dragon, it's probably fiction. If you see a couple kissing, it's probably romance. If you see yellow police tape, it's probably a crime novel. When I saw those lines, I felt like I knew a part of her story. It wasn't an easy story. It was one with bloody tissues and teary eyes, one with screams and defeats. I don't know what made her eyes tear up, I don't know who's blood is on those tissues. I don't know what battlefields she went through. But I knew that she needed to talk.

They were everywhere. The lines. On her arms, her chest, her thighs, her hips, her shoulders. Some were red, some were white. Some were short, some were long. Some were thin, some were wide.
She grasped my gold chain, holding the charm between her index and her thumb. She didn't say much, but she spoke in her soft, unfamiliar voice.
"K." she read from my necklace.

After weeks of watching her through the window, I finally knew what she felt like. Those lines made her skin bumpy, even the white ones. She was fragile, I barely dared to move when I was holding her.