Petechiae 

The events of the night before had scattered a galaxy across the left side of my chest - tiny ruptured blood vessels between armpit and sternum. I could find on my skin Taurus the bull, and down to its left, Orion the hunter. In front of the mirror I got that feeling everyone gets where you stand at the ocean and realize you are weak and pointless.

Lying in bed a year later, he goes Sweet Girl, I worry for you. I feel like you need someone to hold onto. Little Bird. I think of the coke in his system. His heart beats so loudly against my ear that I can’t fall asleep. In a sports bar I drink until he tells me he’ll pay for my Uber. If someday I forget everything else about you, he says, I’ll never forget how fast you drink a stout. Or your face. No, I’ll never forget your face.

Two days after, my galaxy had not yet faded. A policeman asked me if he had touched my front part, or my back part. He wrote my answer down on a pad of paper. The detective watched me hyperventilate in his office and told me that a trial would be very very stressful. You are young and pretty. You should concentrate on school. I will tell this guy to stay away from you. He showed me where the bathroom was and when I saw how red my eyes were, my ugly blotched face, I was embarrassed. 

A year later, waiting for the subway: what are you so afraid of? Forehead to forehead, we discover that his teeth are twice the size of mine and I tell him that I require this of all my lovers. Little Cardinal, I can’t read you at all. You’re such a sweet girl. You’re a rock n roll hottie. You’re so stiff. He makes some comment to his friend about how I am always wanting to sleep with him. He apologizes for his sarcasm and I am wondering about the antiseptic quality of alcohol. I tell him I don’t want to be read so we decide to communicate in sign language and I teach him how to say my name with his hands and we sit side by side in his bed and listen to the same Elliott Smith song twice in a row, him shirtless and me in his shirt. He tells me he’s an alcoholic and an addict. I tell him I’m guarded. Alert the presses, he says.

A doctor named my galaxy several weeks later: Petechiae. She said it will sometimes appear following prolonged physical stress, such as coughing, vomiting, or childbirth. She said this is not a good sign.

We’re drunk eating sweet potato fries on stools. We’re running through the subway, and he holds onto my hand still as I push ahead through the turnstile. Little Bird, Little Bird, what color is your underwear? In a basement sake bar I tell him that galaxies bleed through my skin and that my heart alternates between running too hard and then puttering along like the engine of my family’s 1985 Chevy Nova before it died, our little handprints all over the felt ceiling. Everything my family has ever owned is old or broken, I say. He changes the subject. He’s from California and someone’s dad once told me everything there is new.

Before what happened that night had happened, it had been explained to me how a female dog will look at her master. She is taking in everything he says, he told me. She wants to please her master. She will do whatever he wants. Pause, and then, That’s how I see you look at me.

His heart beats into my back when we spoon. I think of the coke in his system. I think of Taurus the bull. I think of my family’s Chevy Nova before it died.

What I remember is that he had three hats hanging above the door, and on the table he had pinned me against was a collection of lovely clear pebbles arranged to form a triangle. The curtains were drawn. Nick Drake played on his iPod. Would you love me for my money? Would you love me for my head?

He says into my neck that he’s bad news. I tell his ceiling that I think I am too.

Would you love me through the winter?

Let’s play two truths and a lie, he says. They sound the same from you.

Would you love me til I’m dead?

Side by side on a subway platform: Sweet Girl, you are so quiet. Do you trust me? You are so young. You don’t know what trust is. You are such a delicate woman. Little Bird. I say his name with my hands over and over.