and you've changed your bed sheets twice because you
can smell him on your pillowcase. and you've showered
eighteen times in thirty one hours, scrubbing your skin raw and
digging your fingers into your scalp, trying to reach all
the parts that he touched, or may have touched, or breathed on,
and you have bruises on your
hips and maybe a hickey on your
neck, by your collarbone, or on your stomach, and
the most you can remember is shaking legs and
trying not to kick and scream like a child, feeling
helpless and defenseless like a child, so you keep
changing your bed sheets and you try not to remember how
you could practically see your fear in the
reflection of his eyes, you can hear your own voice
as an echo, "look at my face.
please listen to me." and you change your bed sheets and
you can't remember how it looked but you could hear his laugh
and you
take a shower and throw away the t shirt you were wearing,
the bra with the broken clasp, the jean shorts that dug into
your waistline.
and when he leaves you fall onto the floor and you cry and
you spend the day trying not to spit out what he just did to you
and then he stops calling, like he threw you against a wall and
didn't even bother to check and see if you were
still breathing, if any of your pieces were out of
place or broken completely, like he knew exactly what he
had done and somehow, somehow
this manages to make
you feel worse. disposable, like it was never an accident,
like he was looking at your face and he still didn't stop
so you change your sheets and wash your hair
and brush your teeth and take a cold shower and then a hot
shower and then you just sit in the tub and pretend that
he is falling off of you like water when you know that
all he will ever do is stick to you like blood