She Wakes

It starts with the littlest fear -- the possibility that poisons my mind like a drop of dye in the water, and when I smell it I am unable to sense anything else.

Never mind his "hush hush," never mind the sweet hands in my hair, never mind that there's nothing to be afraid of any more; the sharks smell blood and they're coming from miles away. All else can still, but not the jittering in my chest, my leg.

When I start to call it silly, when I start to fight -- finally, then, He speaks to me in a voice like a bucket of dye. I still have stains where his voice has washed down my body, like rain that poured through my hair, making rivers across my collarbones, in skittering lines down my arms, then over the open space and the paths divide to follow the outside and inside lines of my breasts -- thick trails across the hills of my stomach and then gathering, pooling in the hair between my legs.

The stains are from yesterday and two years ago, raw but not faded from my scrubbing.