sometimes quiet is violent

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 mysel...

This summer feels very insignificant. I feel like I'm just floating around, going places and doing things and talking to people but my mind is somewhere completely different. I'm very much between two places and it's off-putting. I've been doing fun stuff, like having picnics and coffee and cooking yummy vegan food and learning the ukulele, but I've also been doing not so fun stuff like fighting and crying and wanting to go back to Scotland sooner than September. I foolishly didn't think that this summer would be that hard. Turns out not seeing the people you're used to seeing everyday kind of messes with your sense of loneliness. Not saying that my friends here back home aren't dear to me too, but having been gone for a year I'm more of a visiting guest now. I know I'll never be able to go back in time and experience the stuff they experienced together without me so I'm happy just going along and experiencing things with them now. That mon...