BRUISE
There is a bed, and a pair of black boots. There are sheets and pillows wrapped in a light blue, yellow flowers swinging loops around a tiny green vine. There is a beige carpet and a wooden dresser and a pair of sharp scissors on a desk in the corner. There is something familiar playing on the radio. There is a bottle of scotch. There is a dull white wall and an open window. There is laughter. There is a mouth and a tongue and the inner thigh once cut on a rusty barbed-wire fence. When she looks in his eyes she feels something at her heart, something much like the web of a spider, something much like a piece of caramel, stuck in the back of her teeth. When she tells him about her clothes smelling scorched he mentions three kittens in a boat, how their boat will turn face over if one of them moves. “What you smell is the little machine running the pictures, “ he says. “You are just making one mistake after another.” One of them says something about love; one of them says something about a black and white film playing downtown. There is a flash of something bright. Later there will be something purple, and then blue, and then a yellow that will remind her of the long train ride to work. Later there will nothing but words the color of salt and rubies.