I was afraid. I had never been afraid of him before, but in the moment I was. His fingers pressed into the bruises he’d already left scattered along my arms. He was hurting me again. He smelled like liquor. It passed from his lips and across my nose and made me dizzy. I looked at the ground, trying to avoid his eyes. He was yelling at me again. He never used to yell at me.
                I didn’t want to go with him. I didn’t want to leave the kitchen, where it opened to the front door which opened to the hall which meant freedom. I didn’t want to go to our room. Where we slept in our bed and he held me and breathed into my hair. I didn’t want to go to our room; where no one could hear us yelling or my screams or his fists against my skin while he beat me black and blue. I didn’t want to go to our room. Where the framed picture of us smiled on the wall through cracked glass and blood where he’d smashed it with his fist. A picture from when he’d never hit me.
                 I opened my lips and a scream came out; probably because he was dragging me by my hair. I slid across the kitchen floor with my scalp on fire and the taste of blood in my mouth. He’d never bitten me before. Not unless we were in the midst of passion and his teeth skimmed my lip. Now he’d pierced it the whole way through. The carpet stopped me mid-slide and the force of it jolted my neck. He spit on me before he picked me up. I stared up at him while his saliva laced with my own blood dripped down my face, and he laughed.
                He didn’t carry me like a princess. Not tonight and not like the first time we’d crossed this same doorjamb. I was over his shoulder, his hands digging into the flesh of the backs of my thighs. He slapped me across the globes of my behind and tossed me face first into our bed where the sheets were still rumpled from where we had slept just hours before. I tried to move but my muscles were too slow and his knee was in my back. My cheek was pressed against the blankets and I could feel blood and tears staining the material. I could only think of how I had neglected to buy bleach.
                His fingers found my hips and pulled them up in a way that made me feel exposed. I couldn’t force the words out of my mouth to beg him to stop. I pressed my knees together and struggled as he forced my jeans down my thighs where they tied my knees together in a way that meant I couldn’t have run if I tried. I choked and nearly vomited as he whispered in my ear all the things he was about to do. All the things I had let him do before because I loved him, but that he was about to take by force.
                 I screamed then, sound erupting from my throat. Spit flew from my mouth and sprayed red across the sheets. I felt his knuckles split as they flew across my face, opening the flesh of my forehead, silencing my pleas. The world swam in front of my eyes and I nearly thanked heaven for letting me sleep instead of watch. Nearly, until I remembered that heaven was allowing this to go on. Everything faded just a moment too late, and the betrayal stung even in the blackness.
                 I woke to wetness. Wetness on my cheeks and my lips, above my eyes; wetness slickening the space between my thighs and my chest. Wetness on my back, smeared across my hips, wetness soaking the sheets. My vision swam, the ceiling fading in and out as my swollen eyes tried to open. Someone was yelling, screaming even. There was pressure on my neck, and it hurt. Everything hurt. I opened my mouth to speak, to beg for it to stop, but my jaw twanged and a soft gurgled came out instead. Someone was talking, moving. I saw hand pass in front of my face. A flashlight held in blood-stained fingers. Who’s blood? Mine? Theirs? Voices were echoing around the room, making it seem so much bigger, making me seem increasingly smaller. Smaller I shrunk until the room was eternal and I was nothing. So little that all I could see was black.
 
A Month Later . . . Sentencing Day
                I couldn’t speak properly when they put me on the stand. They had just taken the wires that held my jaw shut off, and it still ached whenever I tried to open my mouth. It was terrifying to be there. Not because of him, or his nearness, but because of all the judgment and pity that sat in the eyes of the bystanders. They weren’t lawyers or jurors or supporters or avengers they were prying eyes that were reaching into something private that they knew nothing about. They saw a man who had hurt me. Who had broken my jaw and caused the limp that still lingered as I approached the stand to testify against the man I love.
                I saw the man who had made me breakfast in bed sometimes just to watch me smile. I saw the man who liked his coffee the same way I did and turned the water in the shower up a little too hot. I saw the eyes that had caught mine across a classroom back at a college tour; the eyes that had seen me at my most vulnerable, bare and laid out across the grass in the public park in the rain. They saw fists that had hit me and broken me. I saw hands that had held mine when I was in the hospital watching the life we had made together leak from me in a puddle of blood.
                They saw coldness in the way his jaw was set and how he twiddled his thumbs in front of him. I saw him gritting his teeth and trying to keep his hand from shaking and the tears in his eyes from letting loose. They saw an abuser. I saw a scared little boy. I held my hand up and muttered my oath to the judge. I answered the questions his lawyer asked me in a monotone voice, and then stared silently at the DA. He asked if it hurt to speak, and I shook my head in response.
                 Nothing could hurt me. Not when I was numb. I didn’t agree to this trial. I didn’t want him sent away. I wanted him home, holding me, loving me, laughing with me. I wanted to see him when I woke up in the morning and when I laid down at night. He was going to get years for this . . . attempted murder if the DA could pull it off. I sat in silence and stared until they let me return home.
                  It wasn’t the same for me anymore. His absence lingered in a way that swelled my chest and made me feel incredibly empty. The walls were covered in drawings and sketches and murals; black and blue and red like I had been when they found me. Our refrigerator was empty and our room was scattered with papers full of emotionless poems that I had written in the darkest part of the night. The only one that meant anything was smeared across the wall in my favorite red lipstick; the one that had left prints along his neck and down his chest back in the days when we still smiled.

“I liked it when he pulled my hair
When he growled and sunk his teeth into my neck
An emotionless grudge match
Without any love or bare skin

I liked it when he told me I was dirty
When he laughed in my tired face
And pushed me to the couch
Smothered me with a pillow

I liked it when he owned me
When he turned me black and blue
In the heat of all his passion
And with his bare hands

I liked it when it hurt
When he smiled before he left for the night
Every moment that I loved him
The best moments of my worn out numb life”

                 I sighed and leaned my back against the wall, sliding slowly to the floor. I no longer knew what tomorrow held for me. The uncertainty of a life without him, a life without love, wasn’t something that I could bear to imagine. I pulled my knees to my chest and rested my forehead against them, concentrating on breathing in and out. Life would continue on, but would I?