this story has a trigger warning for physical abuse and other adult themes

People aren’t like silk screens. People aren't something you can work at for 6 hours and say, “ta-da.” And no matter how many times I pull my colors through someone, there’s always a way for them to wash it off.

And when I was eighteen my baby didn’t call me baby anymore and I haven't written a love song in three years. I am never going to have knees stronger than a fawn's and I remember how Mike’s hand felt against my neck and how for a while it was the most affection I’d ever gotten from a man, and I gasped “God” into his forearm because for a second I thought I saw him. I thought he was real. And God, why did you come then, while I was biting bullets in the form of my tongue and pressing myself against the underbelly of a bear?

I waited twenty-one years for you. Twenty-one years of carrying this cross around my neck and spitting “Goddamn” to see if you'd finally come down.

And I haven’t written a love song in three years because God forbid I admit to have anything in this chest. And Mike was the kind of guy who's shoes beat the floor harder than his heart beat his ribs and I was the kind of mess that brought the bruises but not the chains and asked for more. But he never told me it was his ex-girlfriend’s couch we fucked on, and if the snakes were going to sing they should have sung for the way I slithered into his bed, my fiberglass hips next to his tobacco built ship, with his broken glass hands that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand, and our wounds were so fresh we couldn't tell them apart. And he said, “I’m worried I'll break you,” and I promised I wouldn’t, pulling him close, but the tiles were already chipping off my bathroom floor, and I hadn't been able to stand in the shower for weeks, for months, and I don't remember when the steam started hurting, but I can't touch it anymore.

And the only way we matched was in our breath and when I said “hit me” he would and I'd treat his hand like ash Wednesday, and the sting was just the blessing setting in. I had someone tell me once you can learn everything from a person's hands. Mike's hands were soft, without callouses. They were large though, his palms wide like his shoulders. But their grip was strong, unfaltering. When I held his hand for the first time, it was to bring it to my neck. My parents would cry if they knew what I let those hands do to me.

And we’d have to lock the dog out of the room because because she’d cry too. My yelps made her jump. And Mike and I were more violent than romantic, and I can’t remember him staying inside after for more than a second. But the first night we met he talked to me like he needed me. And I had refused to let myself be wanted in any legitimate way for months by that point. They would talk and I would growl, ripping their hands from my backside, and threatening to bite it off next time they were near me.

But I heard him breathe to his friends under his breath about me as I walked by their table. When I had to change sections, they would too, to have me hand them bottle after bottle of beer. And on my break I sat and played with Mike’s dog as he smiled down at me, asking question after question about what was a warm weathered Californian breeze doing in a place like this, in the winter, with the flowers dying and the grass sinking into mud. And I said, “Waiting.”

“For what?”

“A dog,” I grinned.

And he left and came back twice that day.

He whispered, as we were pressed close by a bar over capacity, “I think I should take you out sometime.” The two buckets of beer bottles in my hand slid onto my table and I pulled out my pad writing my number down, with a shaking hand. I didn't think about it, I just did it. And I wanted him like he wanted me that night too. And I don't know why things happen like they do, but for a night, it felt right. It felt like things happen like they do because life puts us on a train, and this was going to be my stop for a while.

And after the three AM shift we drank red wine and he put a hand on my knee and that was just enough for me to take him. In bed he talked to me in Spanish, with the Barcelona lisp, because he spent a couple of months there in college, and he eclipsed my body with his arms and I woke up still encased in him. That was the only time he held anything but my wrists.

Soon it was the end of irregular single digit AM shifts and cigarettes in basketball shorts on his balcony in twenty degree weather with the dog at our feet and when he came into the bar the other waitresses would gather around me and whisper, “That’s him?”

“Yes.”

“In the suit? With the briefcase?”

“Yes.”

“And the dog?”

“Yes.”

They’d swoon over him and the matching friends he brought along. And I would stalk my way up to his table, lean on the high top, and smile. And that was going out. That was how we went out. He’d tell his friends, “I’m taking the waitress home” and I’d laugh because that’s all it was and it wasn't even a home because I never saw him genuinely happy in it.

But his pup Star was always happy. I swear to God that dog smiled, with her mismatched ears flipping and flopping, perking and flattening. She was mutt and over the years I’ve learned that mutts are the best; mutts with painted brown spots around their eyes, mutts who were rescued from pounds and now find comfort with their head in your cupped hands. I was pretty sure that Star and I got each other. We spent so much time wanting to be saved, and now we just wanted a place to lay our heads.

But I didn’t know how to talk to him and he didn’t know how to talk to me, but at least I would try, as family pictures and a law degree stared me down. I was not the girl to bring home to ma and pa with my ripped up shirts and liberal voting record, while Mike buttoned up his shirt to the collar every morning, his clean cut face cutting into my palms if I tried to touch him, locking the door as soon as I exited. And when I asked why he took me home that night he said, “I trusted you, you were good with Star.” And Star would perk at her name, and always lay on top of my feet in bed so I wouldn’t get cold. Because someone had to. My shivers were vicious and the warmth in my body was non existent and I had someone tell me once, “You’ll die out there,” and for a second, that winter, I did. But I’ve done that before so it made no difference, so I thought, so I told myself.

And I haven't written a love song in three years, or maybe it was four because at eighteen I had a twenty-seven year old body that I clutched against mine, and he's the reason I wear a rose quartz around my neck. And I remember walking in the park with him, and he pointed to a kid running after a soccer ball. He said, “I want our kids to be like that.” And I think that was the moment I stopped writing them. I couldn't look him in the face, because he never said he loved me, he hid me in his room like a terrible secret, yet he'd say things like that to make me stay. And I did. For almost two years. Two years of me crossing my legs and pursing my lips, and laughing when he said, “you need to learn to love yourself.”

And Mike texts me in begs. I miss you. I want to be with you now. I’d go monogamous. I want to feel-- That’s where I stop. I don’t want any of that. I tell him I’m not here, that my neck is no longer a welcome place for his grip. And I used to cry and shake, and wring my hands when I saw his name and wince at every word. I wanted out. I couldn’t speak because what I wanted wasn’t embedded in the marks I let him leave on my face, and I knew better than to lay my cards on the table.

Mike: We could have been good together... I would have done it for you.

But I haven’t written a love song in three years and he never did a thing for me when I needed him. When I was in the hospital on Thanksgiving he didn’t call, he didn't pick me up, he never asked about how I was, what had done it. He didn't hold my hand when we walked out for cigarettes. He didn’t rub my back and say “good girl” when I was shaking from the electric bruises he left behind rising to the surface on my skin. And I hated staying the night with Mike, but staying in bed with a man who didn’t acknowledge me was better than trying to find my pants, the ones he would tear off in the kitchen, with a sense of guilt and shame hanging over my head. Better than pathetically pulling them over my black and blues, shivering because I was too weak, and for some reason I always thought the next morning would be different. That's how I would rationalize staying.

But it wasn’t different. He’d shower, comb his short blond hair, and tie his tie as he leashed Star, who would scratch at the door. Rain, or shine, or snow, that was a constant. Mike would dress in his suit. Star would scratch at the door. And I'd find myself whimpering in their absence.

Mike gave me his umbrella once which I laughed and cried about because how funny is it that he gives me something to protect my float, when he rained on my parade every goddamn day, with the girls he fucked, even though I told him he could. Because I wasn't about to tie him down. I wasn't about to be the yolk on the ox’s spine, and I had no illusions about what was mine.

And I didn’t want him to be. He was just another way that I was trying to pull myself together, off the floor, out of the dirt. I just wanted to feel whole and I was convinced the only way to feel full and together was for a man to hold me there, because sometimes you're convinced you’re a leftover piece in the wrong goddamn puzzle, or the wrong cliché in the wrong poem. But that’s when I started to fall into a pattern. I’d throw back my head like dog avoiding it’s muzzle, and I’m find my trouble and take it home with me. If you listened very closely, in the dark of the bar, you’d feel the words “make me whole” carved into the table where my hands once sat. And maybe they’re still but I'll never go back to check.

And I still keep opening my mailbox for a letter from a dead man and twist the wrists of the dark figures who touch me in bars, and last night I clamped my wolf jaws down so hard on my pillow I came up with a mouthful of goose feathers. And I’m scared I’ll cry out at night because my heart will stop shivering and just be still and cold, and it’ll never get up again. And M was like North Western rain in a Virginian shooting range. And I’ve made peace with that.

And the thought of his voice no longer stings. I’ve stopped checking corners before I walk incase he strides past with his business wear. I’ve stopped fearing the the suits I see walking down the street, stopped looking for his face in them. And I’ve stopped shaking in anger when he texts in the dead of night, when he’s lonely.

And I think of that woman he’s dating and I don’t hate her like people tell me I should, but I feel her every sting in my chest, and the weight of her breath on my neck. And I want to tell her, “Do yourself a favor and run.” Because I don’t want someone else sleeping on the cold side of the bed. Feeling small, oh so small, and pathetic as they pull their shirt over their bare chest.

Telling themselves they are worth a couple nights a month and that they can live with that. You can’t. I’ve been told skin and bones don’t make a meal, and that's what I ate for months, until I was sick and sallow.

So get out song bird, get out, I know you can sing because I can hear you sometimes in my sleep.

And baby, maybe it doesn't have to hurt. And maybe things are turning around because

I’m not afraid of morning touches, and I don’t flinch at breath on my shoulder like I do the morning light. Because I find our bed every night. In our room. In our home. And I think about the way you hold my hand and how I’ve stopped wincing when you want to touch my face. And I may never be a morning person, you’ll never get me out of the house before eleven, but for you I’ll try to like mornings. I’ll drink half my coffee before two, and maybe I’ll shake the dust.

Maybe I’ll shake the dust and climb up onto our roof where I can catch the sun like a solar panel and store up the warmth for us when the winter hits. Or maybe I’ll release it then and there because I’ve never been good at waiting.

And you take my pouting ribs and turn them into piano keys, and God knows I don’t know how to sing but I’ll sing any song you play on me. And maybe I haven’t written a love song in three years, but I'll play you every one I know. And if you take out the trash, I’ll wash the dishes. If you read the pages, I’ll keep writing them. If it’s a deal, then it’s done.

And I know that if I ever wake up screaming, you’ll be there, and more importantly, I’ll be there, because fuck anyone who says I’m not whole. I’ve got lungs to breathe with and a heart to beat with, and if that’s not proof enough I don’t know what is.

One time I got my foot caught in a bear trap and they hung it on a chain in a gas station window; but I pocketed it on the way out. They’ll have to find their own goddamn luck because this one’s mine, and the next time I give up a part of this home I call a body is around the first of never. And you can laugh all you want, but this one’s mine. And I’ll be damned if I let anyone take it.