Bruise
This is a story, and a memory, a premonition but also a song, softly chanted. It does not need to be understood, in the way me and you do. The bruises only appeared once a month, to begin with. Small and so purple they were almost black, the size of a penny, in the indentation of my hip. Or high up on my inner thigh. Never above my waist, always trailing down my leg or behind my knee. I didn’t know how to explain them, at first. I didn’t remember hitting myself against anything, being prodded or battered by something. Nothing that would’ve caused such an impact, to bruise so darkly and in such a shape. I woke up one morning and found a bigger bruise, on the side of my thigh under my hipbone. It was right in the middle of an area I had been scratching the night before. In my mind, I dismissed that it had been me. Sure, I had used pressure to scratch, to tend to the itch in the skin in the area, but there was no way I had the level of strength that was required to bruise myself li