Grayscale
After she breaks her toe, he angles his Polaroid and takes a picture. She’s not yet 30 with pink and silver hair, often nibbling her lip. He’s approaching forty, a boy who grew up in several foster homes, a man who does not like to look in the eyes of the person he’s standing before.
A radio comes on. Pictures arranged on the bed like a row of open windows. One with purple streaks on the top of her arms and thighs, when she slipped on the drive. Another of his mustache, bristles beginning to gray,the lips underneath striated, on the verge of bleeding. In some, squeezed eyes and the light reflecting off the drawn cheeks, calling the ground up to them. The Polaroid is about capturing a moment when something in the body snaps, dislocates, tries to find its way back. It’s about maintaining a standard. Sharing the agony, holding it still, finally, separating it. It has brought them closer.
She remembers a middle-aged man forcing her in his pickup not too long ago. She remembers him dragging her into a secluded cabin: the thick air, the crickets, the smell of his insides smeared across her face, between her legs. She remembers staring at his shoes, feeling her knees pushing the jeans she’d cut at the mall for an extra $10, her hand squeezing, pinching his balls, harder than ever. She remembers him yelling, crying in pain, her spit hitting his face. Outside, the night, evil black. She remembers staggering along the rutted road as if she was blindfolded, pine needles poking the back of her neck, a chill settled over her shoulders.
She runs her fingers on her scarred wrists, the deep-set marks of restraints. Every time the camera is focused on them, she screams, Fuck off.
Outside, someone is mowing their lawn. The sound fades and rises. If she listens closely, she can feel it reaching her skin, grazing the hair, turning around and going over again.
At lunch, he serves her fish in bed. After clearing the plates, he asks her if he should take her out in a wheelchair. The apartment faces East and all the light makes it harder to rest. Dark circles around her eyes. She’s wearing his black T-shirt with drawings of birds that he bought from an Audubon center. The sheets smell of his sweat.
That evening, while chopping onions, she cuts her thumb and he burns the bottom of his palm on a pan, the stove’s knob accidentally set to High. They pause for a moment, before he reaches for his camera: his eyes sparkling like a summer-warm lake, her mouth soft, to have arrived at this moment together. She presses her bleeding finger against his burn, the gushing red smeared over his hot bruise, a sunset caught on a monochrome film, darkening the evening.