Beige Violence

this abuse didn’t come
in black and blue.
his fists never ricocheted off
her veins as they spiderwebbed
into plum colored welts,
blood never bloomed crimson peonies
from the corners of her mouth
or rooted between
the cracks in her teeth.

but I saw
him feast behind her wooden ribs
(that he claimed she owed him),
planting thistles in her chest
and drinking up her Eden
until she became the apple
lodged in his throat.
her bones clung protruding from
her cellophane hips,
she swears that she’s never hungry
these days.

and he never hit her,
her bones were never shattered
like drywall against
her father’s knuckles,
they never crackled
like burnt embers
dancing in a lake of fire
or snapped like branches
trapped between a rainstorm
and a freight train.

but this isn’t to say
she wasn’t being crushed,
more subtly, like her heart
was made of chalk

and he held it too tightly,
slowly reducing her to dust
and making a bed in her ashes.
I saw him move into her body
and pack the bags under her eyes each night
while insomnia refused her sleep.

that is to say,
when i ask her why she stays,
her eyes search
her unmarked skin
for the reason.

Photo Credit: Aaron Stidwell Flickr via Compfight cc