Closed Rooms vs. Locked Rooms

I had thought at first, that they were pen marks on the inside of his hand.  Along his fingers.  But for a split second, my body reacted as if they were tattoos. (How I have always had a thing for finger tattoos.)  He clenched his hands quickly to make them disappear.  They were equal.  Measured.  They had to be tattoos.

(pause)

People's evolution and the capacity to grow; the transformative power of love*; the backdrop refrain of 'people never change'.

Having worked in the domestic violence movement for a good many years, what I know is that people who brutalize, at best, can only take longer breaks from brutalizing.  They never stop brutalizing.  Once someone has done or said something that destroys, the shock at destruction becomes the norm.  Becomes nothing if but a dull, limp high.

(pause)

Because I can see it just under your skin.  Can see the blades lift up and start to sharpen when you feel rejected.  They start to move- like a Ferris wheel but faster, and with knives- just under the surface.  I can see your eyes roll back a bit.  Not as in valley girl, but as in beast throwing its head back in ecstasy in the midst of a particularly gruesome kill.

I watch you harness it.

With such thin threads.

Tell me:

Are eight fingers enough to mark your deeds, and

in the blur of the end of this longer break,

will you see them?

(pause)



In the words of Bianca Del Rio (silencing Laganja and all her dramatic whining about her parents):

Well I was raised by wolves, bitch, and *I'm* still survivin'.


-k.


(photo: Kansuke Yamamoto The Closed Room)
(*="the transformative power of love" is a reference to a quote by bell hooks, which is this: "The transformative power of love is not fully embraced in our society because we often wrongly believe that torment and anguish are our 'natural' condition.")