Shoulders hunched
chest, lungs, throat tight, constricted
sleep forfeited in razor edge vigilance
skin and hair and dreams scorched from uncontained wildfires
bitten and buried beneath whiteout of cold storms.
Nerve endings agitated
anticipating, always anticipating
the sound of angry footsteps
the acrid morning-after miasma of sweat and stale Jack Daniels
the hot piercing of glacial-blue-eyed blame.
Eyes cried-out and swollen, past dry, filled and emptied so many times the tears were no longer my own, dredged from deep within the earth’s mantle, blue rock water crystals broken free from hydrous ringwoodite trickling salty and primordial down my cheeks to be reabsorbed into Earth’s core.
Heart hardened, edging out the diamond as the world’s hardest substance, harder than the sparkling stone that never left my left hand, and before that, left my grandmother’s only upon her death, a stone worn by a woman whose heart stayed soft, in a love that didn’t die, even after death.
Joyless orgasms, the way rape victims are said to cum against their will,
bodies doing what bodies are meant to do,
bodies confusing love and hate,
confusing excitation, agitation, fear, arousal,
confusing the tight embrace with the stranglehold
confusing instinctual struggle against drowning with tacit consent to go under.
Until,
finally,
finally,
the body remembers
the feel of safety
the call of safe harbors
the sweet pull of freedom.
The body remembers to murmur its first “no,”
begins to shore up a breath here and there
hears the slow crescendo of “no’s” building one upon the next
hums a faint soundtrack of escape
unfurls the spine, one vertebrae at a time,
opens its eyes
readies in anticipation of the push off
the release of the final, “No!”
the screaming, rock-solid thrust,
Earth’s primal energy released from its core
flowing again unchecked,
up through the mantle
up past the crust
up and up and up until it courses through my bloodstream
emblazoning my cells and pores
alighting my muscles
birthing new skin and hair and dreams
assuring me that now,
now
is the time.
Get out.
Get out now.
One year later, my body remembers.