Confession

“He never really hit me,
and anyway it was so long ago. Yes,
there were some other things, but never
was there hitting. Sometimes he’d twist
my arm hard behind my back, then push
it up until it felt as if it might
break off. Occasionally he’d hold
my shoulders tight then yank me to him
and lean down until our faces were so close
that I could see his pores and then he’d
scream You are so weak, what have you
DONE the last ten years? And then he’d throw
me backwards in disgust; I’d fall
against a table or a chair or, one time,
back into the empty tub. Once he bounced
me off the corner of a wall, I hit the tile floor
so hard, my eye already swelling and
vertigo setting in and I looked up at him,
I felt confused you know at what he’d done
and why and he was looking down
at me, his arms loose at his sides, his face
impassive and his mildest voice just
curious: What did you DO to yourself?
he asked me, but I couldn’t find the words
to speak at first and then I saw
he’d left the room. I got to my feet
and went to the phone–it was the first time
I ever wanted the police–but when I looked up
he was in the doorway asking Who
did you call? I said I’m going to call
the police, and he yelled That’s JUST
the kind of person you ARE. I didn’t call.
My eye was still black on Thanksgiving
at my parents’ house, so I wore my hair over
the eye, but I knew that it showed whenever
I turned to talk at the table. I tried not to talk.
I was ashamed of the bruise; I felt dirty.
Later I looked in Mom’s bathroom mirror
and whispered, You’re one of those women.
I saw my lips moving as if they were
somebody’s lips but not mine.

“I want to stop here and point out
that he was kind to me, very kind, a real friend
when he wasn’t that way. Most of the time
he was good, but he had this occasional mood.
Sometimes I could tell it was coming on,
but generally it was a random thing.