i get what i want

I held onto the railing behind her on the train. My stomach pressed against her the entire trip, knowing she was feeling it between her shoulders. When we got out, I pretended to drop it. I brushed my elbow against her breast, and reached the corner by the time it was noticed.

She helped with what we couldn’t carry. Her fingers fucked up the belt, so I did it for her. I left my hands there. It didn’t leave as many marks this time. We watched television back at the house. I saw her sitting on the arm of the chair. I kept my eyes closed while I pretended to breathe, and didn’t say anything as I felt the tugging in my hand. She went to bed, and I climbed through the screen.

She hid under the steel railing until I could get her to come out with what I offered. I tried to drag her out with each hand wrapped around her ankles, but I should know by now that it’s the trifle things that get the job done. The corner of a small blanket more than any person or animal or place or item or anything else in the entire world.

We took her in again, and they didn’t question the documents or spotting. They showed her the chart, I left the room so they could ask the question. I came back in, and we left together. The night after, she tried it. Stupid fucking bitch with a few chewed off and corroded bobby pins half-drowning in the bathtub thinking it’ll make a dent. She told her she was just “testing” them. Swallowed in red Old Navy sweatshirts and week-old white fleece pajama pants.

I’m trying to remember the conversation we had in the bathroom. The towel was wrapped around my waist. They were wrong about the progression, I felt the outline and saw the stain. This was my choice. I get what I want. I’m not going to worry over something that isn’t happening.

She handed her a flower she found growing in between the bricks in the backyard. She still looked small.

He came for an hour visit before it closed. I saw a printed picture of her. Moon face, white long sleeve t-shirt with her half exposed tits covered in stretch marks years old. Skin that an entire hand can grab. Little fucking lipstick smile on her face, wearing a robe, holding onto a certificate with five skinny animals from different fathers clinging to her leg with the same desperate eyes.

I wondered how much she would fuck them over. Her living in a state of emergency, talking in circles until they beg to sit alone in a room. The men in and out, willing to take anything available to them. I wondered if they would grab her by the neck and shove her against the wall when she gets hysterical about the search history on the family computer. The little drugs they give her to get along.

What she would trade to be able to have more than the twin mattress in the corner of the dining room. If she dilates so it doesn’t hurt when he forces it inside before he goes to work in the morning. Does she cry every time, and wish she could wake up and be anyone, anywhere else. I wondered how long it would continue on with them. I wondered if when she scrubbed her hands bare doing the dishes in the afternoon, she thought of me.

The next year he came back to show me the pictures of the flowers and precious trinkets on the corner by the front yard of the apartment complex. Metal plaque in the bench beside the cracked sidewalk with small flecks in the cement. Her small picture engraved with the words “We will always be together.”