(no subject)
Her breath smells like vodka. Her breath smells like vodka and that's all I can think of when she starts to talk to me again. I'm 13 years old and awkward as hell, all I can feel is the way her nails dig into my skin. The impressions they leave in my wrists are fiery crescents that sting when touched later on. Nobody sees it, nobody notices. I mutter that I've learned the way to be invisible and I guess I believe that sometimes. I didn't want to be visible.
Her breath smells like vodka and the words she says make me cringe. She promises things, moves my hand when I don't want to. With a harsh enough jerk I fall forward and she laughs. That pleases her, and I find sometimes that I can no longer move with what grace I once possessed. I pretend that I understand this animal language. In truth, I do not.
The knife pressed to my belly is cold, it makes me recoil. She tells me where to move, what to do. The moves aren't foreign to me, but they are something I don't feel comfortable with. I shut my eyes, she demands I open them. I lick my dry lips, I look away. I stutter, I stammer, I feel the shiver that rolls down my back in repulsion. I don't know what I'm doing.
She tells me what to do and I listen. She tells me she wants me to remember, that she wants me to understand that she is the person doing this to me. She wants to irrevocably change me, to know that she wrought this damage. Tom's name lingers on my lips, but I don't say it. I stare at her. She says she sees orange in my eyes, a web-like structure along my iris that lies in sharp contrast with the dark blue that circles my eyes. She says she sees orange in my eyes, that she can't see her own reflection in them. She wants to own me. She wants to hurt me. Her breath smells like vodka and the bottle gets smashed against the table. She traces the glass shards over my fingertips in order to feel the scars when I touch her. I ask her for some simple pleasure and she laughs. She asks where I got the idea that I deserve anything remotely like that. My jaw snaps shut, it's set.
Her nails rake across my cheek and I take it. Her nails dig into my neck and I take it. I grunt, my eyes shut. I'm aware that my fingers are bleeding. Nobody notices it the next day. Nobody notices anything. The tension rises in me and I want to yell at her. I want to do something, anything. She turns on the television when she asks me to touch her. I tell her no. The belt comes down. I get tired. I'm thirteen years old and I'm tired, I can't sleep.
She shoves me against the stacks in the library, her tongue is hot and her lip gloss tastes sickeningly sweet. She shoves me against the stacks and I understand why people compare women to cats. Her form is lithe, disgusting. I never want to touch her again, I never do. I taste her lip gloss on my lips that night. I vomit the next morning as soon as I wake up and nearly every morning after. I wake in the night in a cold sweat and can't curl up tight enough to get away from it.
Mother sleeps in a haze from her surgery. Father is never around.
We travel to Louisiana that summer.
She calls me and I answer the phone.
She lets me listen while the two men fuck her.
She's drunk out of her mind and I just sit on the bunk in silence.
I wonder what my life has come to.