Rainy Sunday breakfast. What a dream if not for the diagonal lines of meaty pink across my back, underneath my clothes, beseeching my mouth to react, though the clench of my teeth are a barricade through which nothing escapes. You're a cumbersome presence, radiating fear everywhere you go.
Air washed clean, smells like water, smells green. Breathing gives temporal joy and my met teeth part a little, by now you're calm again. A couple of hours, a faraway memory, you forget it easy. My calmness lasts as long as yours does, until the next nerve is got on and I am either stupid or being too clever: the beat up vessel of your anger.
The scald from tea on my tongue deadens the pain of your abuse. A burning, slight numbness, anything else is tasteless. I am grateful for not feeling. Please, allow me this fleeting semblance of peace, stop your talking at, so much noise.
You don't like my hands on my ears. Hot tea bathes and burns my face, my chest, but it's good. A blow to the head, the face, an involuntary tear, but it gives me a boost. Metallic warmth in my mouth, trickles down my chin, my neck, my cleavage, reddening my shirt, but it gives me a kick, a power to walk.
Signs of rain erased by a flaring ball of white gold. Unapologetic, intense, lending life to the carcass you thought you made of me, letting me walk at the damn pace I choose. Gravel embed my soles and amplify my spirit. You're too afraid to come after, behind me you become smaller and smaller.
And so to walk is all it takes. Smaller and smaller.
