For Nine Years He Mistook My Silence for Surrender; What He Never Understood Was That Every Dinner I Didn’t Fight About Was a Day I Stayed Close Enough to Gather What I Needed to End Him

And I sat with what that meant for a while, because it seemed important.

The bruise had done its work.

It had been photographed, and entered into a record, and it had helped put a no-contact order in his pocket and a domestic-assault charge on his warrant, and then, having served its purpose, it had faded and gone, and left my skin clean.

That felt like the right shape for the whole thing.

I did not want to carry Roman with me.

I did not want a scar, literal or otherwise, a permanent mark that would let him keep living in my body and my mind long after he had left my house.