Arlene Ang
Bruise
And the skin on her face
clones the fist that hit her. She is worn out
by the ghosts she wears around her shoulders—
drizzle, the missing porch light,
a cat asleep in the engine of a dead car.
The bruise can, at any moment, seep downhill
to her neck the way her father filled a glass
with apple juice and smashed it
against the wall. The wound on her left
earlobe hiccups, like a dream of drowning.
She applies pressure until she is back
in the kitchen. On the floor,
debris and a plastic bucket of chocolate
ice cream. She lays a scoop
on her wrist and watches it melt.
If this heat on her skin is the equivalent of living,
it must be because she hurts most
where other people have left
imprints of themselves, imprints that spread
small universes before being absorbed
back into her body.
The boy pretending to be dead
climbed out of the window one morning:
this was how he imagined dying. He bore his blue
raincoat like a whale and kept the drizzle out.
He wanted to know if anyone would notice
his absence. On the first day, he ate chocolates
up an oak tree, rescued kites for children who were
no longer there. The second day was the hardest:
he went to school and watched from the outside.
In class, the teacher was talking about the importance
of objects he couldn’t run inside to touch.
The same number of hands were raised.
Behind his desk, a pile of other students’ coats.
He didn’t have to know the answer to anything.
He stopped hearing the questions. He never expected
to see his father arrive to collect his textbooks,
his notes from the principal—their movements grainy
and stilted like a WWII film. On the third day,
he knew it was too late, too dangerous to come home:
the smell of coffee and bleach took apart the kitchen,
his presence replaced by his mother weeping.