but I did bruises...
At work more than two asked, “is everything OK at home?”
The one girl I’ve actually had drinks with after a shift took me aside, serious concern wrinkling her brow. “Did Dave hit you?” It came out a sharp whisper. At this point I laughed, “No really. I swear to god I walked right into the bedroom door. I was looking back over my shoulder at the dog.” “But what about?” “I really did trip up the stairs.” I say, “and I really did walk right into that parking meter.”
Dave did leave bruises, just not in ways that showed.
Hurt in a Skirt
Each team plays six members. The pack consists of the pivot and four blockers. Then there’s the jammer. Small, light and fast, she fights her way through the pack to score points. It’s a fast moving, hard hitting game requiring elbow, kneepads, mouthguards and helmets. They push, slam and trip each other, bodies crashing, sliding and tumbling across the hard wooden floor, wheeled boots and limbs flailing. The uniforms are scanty, lots of girlflesh on display for the crowd to admire. Bruises are the merit badges of their game. They display them proudly and call it hurt in a skirt.
Machines beep and pulse and tock against the background sound of air being pumped with metronomic precision. There are no windows here; the room is twilit, harsh glare damped, glancing off painted cinderblock, trying to resemble a place for sleeping, for rest.
The one who is not sleeping lies still at the center of the machines, large capable hands odd and subtly wrong idle and at rest, the corded forearms lax, the wiry hairs springing clean and healthy from pale, waxy skin. Eyelids shut over sea-green, coveted lashes curve like painted lines, and the hollows beneath are deep and dark as bruises.
Oh, Bev. That just
hurts.
ooh! I'd meant to mention it, but I picked up a book of verse edited by Neil Gaiman and ... someone whose name I don't remember ... called "Now We Are Sick". There's an advisory on the back that it's not for children.
Bruises
I’ve got quite an assortment. The one on my left shin, with a cut in the center, is from when I forgot the oven door was open. The one on the right thigh is from stumbling (I was wearing heels that day) and falling onto the desk. I got the one that covers my right forearm when the elevator door closed on me. And the big one that goes around my wrist and up my left arm from falling onto an iron fence. I guess wearing the hearts-and-flowers “I like it rough” t-shirt would be asking for it, huh?
