the pastel grit or a pasted grimace (my lasting death)

the second (third; he cried twice the night he strangled and slapped me around during sex, the night he punched the wall) time he cried
 

broke my heart
 

“you’re breaking up with me because you think i’m ugly”
 

broke my heart, i always knew he thought so, i always knew he was scared i thought so
 

all i gave, every last penny, every last paintbrush, every pot of acrylic ground
 

all he stole, my t-shirt from david that got me through so much, my deftones tee, because “you love him more than you love me”
 

nothing could make him feel beautiful or loved. every fight he picked while he was still inside me scars
 

and the worst is when someone says, “wow! he was cute! you gotta give yourself that”
 

because
 

love is funny and love doesn’t stop--he would rave, “i didn’t rape you! you can't love me if i raped you! you can’t love somebody who rapes you!” but “yes, i can…and i do. i love you, and you raped me. the two aren't mutually exclusive”--just because somebody hurts you.

me.

 

but he fucked me up. and fucked me up. i hate it when
 

“he’s cute! why’d you break up with him?”

“joe…you keep raping me. i’m not happy. you keep dragging me around the apartment, hurting me, and raping me. just about every day. you did it twice yesterday…i keep telling you, you gotta change what you do or you gotta move out.”

i’m not telling them

and i miss him. he really knew how to make me laugh and consistently surprise me with his ability

to make me laugh

his paintings, his drawings

 

breathless

but watching him hate himself as he painted in front of me, worrying that i was judging, muddying
his work, the beautiful layers of paint turning monochromatic and the scene going flat

hurt me as much as what he did physically

 

worried me sick

but did i set him free? to create and paint and love? no. he’s just not going to grow if he doesn’t find a way to love himself. all he did was!

he was fourteen, not fifteen? and he was a chubby kid with big blue eyes and trying to fit in. he was just a kid, and a mistake just got away from him

my mistake

he smoked his first cigarette in the school bathroom to be cool with his glossy near-black hair and didn’t put it out so the school, the whole school…ashen, gone, and he (i suspect) never.

the same. always running, tunnel-vision, from the shame. and he gets hit and it all comes back to. burns back down to:

i was twelve. it was my dad’s bathroom. (when i was seven it was my mom’s station wagon and the door. i’ll never forget her smack on my knee, the wild realization that the door had almost whipped away from me with the wind, that i was barely able to grip the handle and nail it back shut instead of sending it flying from the median. but i’ll never forget the desperate need to open it. had to know, had to know, oh, days, weeks, months of dying to know culminating.) he always had candles burning everywhere, scented candles, to try to drown out the cigarette stench. this one was, oh, plumeria-ish. a mauve-rose color in a horrible votive, blue checkered borders and ducks. i just had to know, i just had to know.

i guess it was a puff? is that the brand? the lotion-heavy ones. i grabbed a square, i just had to know, and smothered the candle with it. only it burst instead, burst, and i tried to put it out but it was burning too quickly, so i dropped it. into the trash can? not the sink? how silly, not even into the toilet, how silly of me.

 

dad broke down the door, basically, but i think i let him in after the danger overpowered the pounding. the wastebasket in the tub, the showerhead on, the trash taken outside. then the lie:

"the kleenex was stuck to my elbow cuz of the toothpaste, and i tried to wave it off, but it landed on the candle.” dad was crazy abusive, crazy, and he would’ve screamed, grounded me for the first and only time, but he knew how terrified i was, that the lie didn’t mean i’d do it again, be stupid again.

so he softened.

 

i tried, i really tried, with joe. but three murder attempts are three too many. he stopped himself each time, but going crazy over sexual matters like that is troubling in and of itself. it really is, and i loved him, i still love him, but jeff was like…look, i’ve lost a friend to an abusive boyfriend, he killed her; my father was horribly abusive while i was growing up and my mother, she's lucky, it took forty years but he’s fine now; i’ve had to rescue bloodied friends from their boyfriends; too many go back to their abusers and say “i don’t know why, but i did,” and you’re not going to.
 

i finally told him. i was all, oh, my god…i was going to make a clean break, but then his truck broke down at 10:30 the night before my 6:30a flight to hawaii and i had to pay for the fucking tow truck again, always paying joe’s tow-truck bills, for clothes, for food, even threatened into paying for gas--and that day he’d threatened to kill me if i didn't hand over my iPhone 3…so i just let things happen differently, let him store my stuff at his mom’s…and i got back, and he physically assaulted his way into moving back in with me…at his mom’s advice…and he’s been strangling me, he’s tried to kill me one more time, he’s been grabbing me by the neck, the throat, raping me every day…because i’m in too much pain from him tearing up my vagina to be able to have consensual sex, since he rapes me before i’m healed enough to be okay again…fucking getting old, fucking not dripping natural lubricant just knowing i’m gonna get fucked, fucking a…and if he would just wait long enough, if he would just let me give him loving blowjobs instead of the ones he screams at me for after listening to me scream and cry because i’m just not able to handle that lovely, gorgeous, huge, favorite, wonderful, painful cock…all the while screaming “you don’t love me! no, blowjobs aren’t about love! sex is love! if you loved me you’d let me fuck you! if you loved me we could have sex! giving me a blowjob doesn’t prove that you love me!” but…somehow…this week, last week…i’m starting to forget i’m supposed to be kicking him out. i’m starting to forget…that this is bad. i’m starting to forget…that i had a different kind of life planned.
 

and jeff was like, you are going home and getting that restraining order against him. you’re going home and breaking up with this asshole. today.
 

i got home and joe was shuddering in his sleep. his cheeks rattle and he snores like an ox. tiny little thing, skinny, gorgeous, funny little thing. i always suspected that he sleeps hard to escape. he sleeps through--i have a video of myself laughing so hard i’m screaming, the phone is shaking, you can see when i double over, playing with his bellybutton, sticking things in it, keys, paper clips, what have you. two keys, simultaneously, and then jiggling them around. he sleeps, i think, to run away. he’s miserable, he hates himself, and he just drops into nothingness. with ease. his father beats, kicks him awake. but he must sleep so hard to run away
 

from beatings
 

from kicking
 

words that gut

from the collapse he feels. i sat beside him and i thought, “no. i’m staying. i can’t leave; i can’t stop trying. i can’t leave him to them, i can’t stand the pain, i can’t stand him having no one who just loves, loves, loves him.” his friends use him for drug money. his friends are shit. all of them are shit. not one of them tells him when he’s gone too far, when his red screaming face scares them beyond the pale.

and i thought, “i know…this is the only time i’m happy: when he’s asleep. but…i don’t want to leave.” and i woke him up. and he started screaming and hitting me: “someone i went to jail with has been spying on you! tailing you! …the person i went to jail with, haha, you're so stupid, i know who you’ve been meeting! don’t you know he’s a plant? i made him agree to meet you so he could tell me if you’re a cheater! and you’ve been fucking him! you’re cheating with--haha, you’re so stupid! you’ve been cheating with my friend! and my other friend, he's been spying on you! what’s his name? tell me his name so i can tell you who he is! i can tell you where he lives! who is he? i went to jail with him and we’ve been in on this together all this time! you’re so fucking stupid. you slut! you whore!”

 

jail? that’s how i find out? and i know he never cheated, and that he probably wouldn’t, and the sex was worth autographs when it wasn’t me screaming or even just plainly groaning, “this is rape, you know that…what, do you think doing that is going to make me enjoy it? okay, this tactic feels nice, but the sex still really hurts, and i’m not having any fun”
 

what will it take for him to stop?
 

killing his next girlfriend? his mom won’t even give him that talk. she should. nancy is just setting up his next girlfriend. she’s setting him up to go too far. she knows it, and nothing could make her happier than being in cahoots with someone she’s willing to betray, someone she’s goading into a dangerous future. someone she’s willing to help be a murderer.
 

someone she’s trying to find a partner for so she can dispense of the babies.
 

but if that someone ends up dead…where do they go?
 

i love him, and i forgot

 

(that dying is the end, amongst other stars)