Tumble backwards
Trip on air
Bump an elbow
Bruise a hip

Clumsiness paints my body black and blue
Sick yellows curl around burst vessels
like constellations
against my midnight

I’d cover them
but why
hide the universe

My body is black,
My heart now blue,
Beat up and battered,
From the time I loved you.

Bruises, they fade,
Into mere memories,
They lighten in shade,
And vanish, no pain.

But sometimes at my waist,
I swear I can see,
Your arm wrapped around me,
In black, blue and green.

A school bag against a wall,
paint peeling at the edges, grass growing
upwards, clinging to life
between the cracks of the pavement.

A hand on the school bag
clenched around the handle,
fingers pressed together,
curled, and the nails press into the heel of the palm.
They leave dark little crescents.

A boy;
he curls tighter against the wall,
a shadow throws itself over the bruise on his chin.

The boy pulls his school bag towards him,
rests his bruise on it. His fingers grasp
at the worn weave of it.
Eyes close, wrinkle shut.
Obscure all other senses,
so hearing is the sharpest.

Not yet, not yet. No footsteps yet.

Breath shudders, suppressed
from flaring nostrils.
Barely escapes from his lungs,
that are squished against all his other organs,
in that winding space of a box
compressing all of his organs.

No footsteps, no footsteps yet.

Breathe, breathe.

Footsteps.

Laughter, slinking around the corner,
ahead of the approaching group.
It plunges into the taught space of his ears.
Echoes there.
Thumps against his skull.
Footsteps.

A school bag, pressed tight against a boy,
who wraps his person around it,
begs it to be a shield.

A hand, curling into a fist.
Footsteps.

A boy,
and three others.
Three grin,
one does not.
He can't see their teeth, his eyes are stuck tight.

"Look at this pathetic ****."
A slap of sole on pavement.
A boy stepping forward,
body harsh.

A flinch.

A laugh.

"******* hell, I can't even be bothered."

Footsteps.

A high, quiet sob.

Fingers on a schoolbag, loosen.

my knuckles are bruised,
the colour of sunsets and
irony, because they say i'd
never hurt a fly yet i'd
throw my fist into a window
as a fatal act of defiance.

hasn't the world
taken enough from me?

cheap makeup covered
the purple marks of his "masculinity"
forced upon her in the hours of
coal, coldness and blame.

before it got too much,
I saw her stand on her tiptoes
and dissolve into the night sky,
into the night gutters,
into the night cries,
of pills, diets and mutters.

and right as the moon
swallowed her whole,
only to spit her out onto
guilt soaked mornings;
she survived.

Lies, bruises, insults right to my face
I thought our love was worth it
Until somebody told me
That the people who hurt you
Couldn't have loved you.


F.Z.N