Seizing the spigot with frenetic desperation,

her withered hands fumble, gyrating the shower faucet toward the hottest setting.

As she rakes her brittle nails across swathes of scalp, through skin dotted with horripilation

Eyes shut, stagnant locomoting, body in autopilot as she exuviates layer after layer-

Anything to purge the sensation of invasion gripping her conscience. 

When the cold moisture begins to dwindle, 

its diminished sigh exhausts, she bids a warm welcome to the searing,

caustic rivulets like acid rain.

Hunched in fetal repose, replaying episodes of your wrath,

The heat takes her away.

Where you struck her, arms    legs      then  chest. 

The heat takes her away.

Where you left her exposed and assailable.

The heat takes her to a place uncertain.

Like a vulture’s repast.

Gathering sheets of inky hair, covering What’s Left with a fibrous towel

She exits the glass sliding doors, stepping into frigidity.

In the two-way mirror,

Under the scrutiny of fluorescent, yellow light

A haggard corpse wrought with bags of skin

Suspended below starless eyes

Seems to stare back.

Viewing mankind in dichotomized extremities,

Irrevocably you stand her sole behemoth. 

Ill-fated beings condemned to shades of Black and White

Do you find yourself guiltless? Is she forever tainted? 

Your youthful innocence has eluded you:

Once a bereaved child,  you’ve morphed into a lurid mutation;

Besotted, you transmogrified red roses into red vestiges,

Etching Rothkos along her limbs-

Evocative of their hours spent 

Crossed,

Extended,

Shielding,

Her body from the remains of your unslakable rage.

Do you recall chasing schoolgirls up and down fields of mulch

Through switchgrass, adumbral forests, screaming with jocular delight?

Now, their screams ring with trepidation.

What have you become?

A glaring red 10:00 and nocturne descends, your sinewy hands skulk on the prowl.

From a chink in the dresser, past lucent blinds, her eyes drink a lithe figure

Convulsing with excitement. Grey, cold, and vacant, 

You take pleasure in little games of hide and seek.

1. Press hard. Bruise deep.

2. Fold. Embrace. Repeat.

3. Pay no heed to quiet reproach.

Do the bruises detonating on her arms, your cognizance of the urticating pain

Not rebuke you? 

Silently. Tacitly. Do you hear?

Vision disjointed, affliction anointed, and all she can see

Is the keratin debris lodged between her frangible nails.

10:42 and the clock rings true…

What could she possibly do to resist your adverse cycle?

Her once pure expanse, 

Fleeting- by the sheer accretion of your vices:

Wielding the remnants of human condition. 

Your blush- forever enlaced in hers. 

Together you are damned. Together you are ruptured.

And it is duly so.

So today, she seeks solace in the sober amber warmth,

Strands of muffled, sable hair 

Tangling, sticking to her face by the grace of the wind

And the substance of sweat. 

Clinging on to small slivers of hope

Clutching its rawness with every fiber of her being;

She waits for a better tomorrow, a better you

Until death’s blue toll seals you with its last, eternal kiss. 

Bride burnings in India.

Honor killings in Lebanon.

Femicide in Turkey.

Mutilation in Yemen.

1 in 3 women, victims of domestic violence.

Yet we remain static.