she pushes her shirt sleeves up to her elbow and absent-mindedly rubs the insides of her arms while she’s talking to me. i’m not listening, i’m looking at the scars on her wrists.

“i think he deserves a second chance,” she says, raising her eyes wistfully to mine, pulling my attention back to her speech. i wasn’t listening and i’m not sure i really heard what she said, i’m hoping that i’m wrong, but her words hang in the stillness of our apartment, steadying themselves suspended from the corners of the ceilings and back down to my ears.

i look back at her wrists, instinctively, i can’t help it. i’ve kissed those scars, i’ve watched them heal, turn from pinkish back to solid strong flesh. yes, she gave them to herself, but that’s not entirely true, they’re also from him.

cowering outside the doctor’s office, she’d cried. sank down to the floor, pressed up against the wall, covered in tears, repeating over and over again that she didn’t want this. a slideshow repeating in her head: a dime-sized elbow, bumper stickers, a speculum. he didn’t pick her up and carry her inside, and he didn’t help the nurses strap her into the stirrups. but he didn’t drive her home, and he didn’t hold her hand.

“he didn’t hold the razor, either,” she’d told me once. she cut her wrists on her own, she ran her fingers through the blood that had dripped onto the tiles, she drew patterns and coughed and spit up mucus flecked with black dried blood until the paramedics and the authorities came.

he deserves a second chance.

i don’t say anything; i couldn’t say anything, even if i had anything to say, my lips feel like they’ve compressed into one being, to open them would require ripping and more pain and blood than i want to imagine right now. i tie my shoes, i leave the apartment, she’s watching me, but she’s not crying.

i didn’t come home that night; i don’t come home ever again. a friend offered me his couch. i walked into his place and he emerged from the bathroom, belt still unbuckled, holding a beer in one hand and a tube of sexual lubricant in the other. i didn’t, i couldn’t; i smeared the clear gel on our foreheads, covering our eyebrows, and i left.