In this dream, you stand in front of me when rage pays a visit. We’ve seen each other before, rage and I—brushed shoulders in passing, eyed each other from across rooms. In this dream, rage takes my hand and electrifies my body, bristles through my veins, surges to the tips of my fingers until I can feel my pulse in my eyes and visions fill my head. They are memories, some my own, observed through wide eyes, and some told as stories, whispered to me in sweltering shades of red or forlorn blues.
As the memories fill my mind, I become something other than myself, no longer the painfully shy girl who hid behind her mother’s legs, who could be hushed with a single word, who thought herself a coward—I am not the one who obeyed, I’m not a girl at all, no, I am his bruise, her anger, my brother and my sister, both boy and girl or something in between, some hybrid being of pictures and people. I am many ages, I am five, eight, seventeen, and forty-four because my mother comes too with her blonde hair and mistrust of men. Their pain is mine, these body dwellers, and I am theirs, although I am still the one who never got into trouble, the one who was spared. They spread through my limbs and psyche as my hand reaches out toward you and we recall your short temper, your desire, the sound of a child’s wail, of a door locking, of leather against denim as the belt slides off your waist, and although I’d never lift a finger, we slap you across the face with every ounce of all our beings. In this dull thud of flesh and bone, the weight of our collective years slides off my back and I think this is called satisfaction.
When I awake, I remember that some people never have to pay the debts they owe. Disappointment mocks me, as if a slap could produce missed child support, could undo psychic wounds. I know the truth: that some people steal, cheat, and make out like bandits, recline into luxury leather, dip their toes into white sands, smile benevolently at church, and some people really do get away with it all, until their daughters become writers.
