trying to. He fucked me a lot. I’d be crying or waiting. I’d be-
staring. I’d stare. I was like some idiot, staring. After he
fucked me I’d just be there, a breathing cadaver. Y ou just wait,
finally, for him to kill you; you hope it w o n ’t take too long,
you w o n ’t have to grow old. Hope, as they say, never dies.
T im e’s disappearing altogether, it doesn’t seem to exist at all,
you wait, he comes, he hurts you this w ay or that, long or
short, an enormous brutality, physical injury or psychological
torture, he doesn’t let you sleep, he keeps you up, he fucking
tortures you, yo u ’re in a prison camp, yo u ’re tied up or not,
it’s like being in a cell, he tortures you, he hurts you, he fucks
you, he doesn’t let you sleep, it doesn’t stop so it can start
again, there’s no such thing as a tw enty-four-hour day. I don’t
know. I can’t say. I didn’t go out anymore. I couldn’t walk,
really, couldn’t m ove, either because physically I couldn’t or
because I couldn’t. There’s one afternoon he dragged me from
the bed and he kept punching me. He pulled me with one hand
and punched me with the other, open hand, closed fist, closed
fist, to m y face, to m y breasts, closed fists, both fists, I am on
the kitchen floor and he is kneeling down so he can hit me,
kneeling near me, over me, and he takes m y head in his hands
and he keeps banging m y head in his hands and he keeps
banging m y head against the floor. He punches m y breasts. He
burns m y breasts with a lit cigarette. He didn’t need to hold me
down no more. He could do what he wanted. He was
punching me and burning me and I was wondering i f he was
going to fuck me, because then it would be over; did I want it?
He was shouting at me, I never knew what. I was crying and
screaming. I think he was crying too. I felt the burning. I saw
the cigarette and I felt the burning and I got quiet, there was
this incredible calm, it was as i f all sound stopped. Everything
continued— he was punching me and burning me; but there
was this perfect quiet, a single second o f absolute calm; and
then I passed out. Y o u see how kind the mind is. I just stopped
existing. Y ou go blank, it’s dark, it’s a deep, wonderful dark,
blank, it’s close to dying, you could be dead or maybe you are
dead for a while and God lets you rest. Y ou don’t know
anything and you don’t have to feel anything; not the burns;
not the punches; you don’t feel none o f it. I am grateful for
every minute I cannot remember. I thank You, God, for every
second o f forgetfulness Y ou have given me. I thank Y ou for
burning m y brain out to ashes and hell, wiping it out so it is
scorched earth that don’t have no life; I am grateful for an
amnesia so deep it resembles peace. I will not mind being dead.
I am waiting for it. I have breasts that burst into flames, only
it’s blood. Suddenly there’s a hole in my breast, in the flesh, a
deep hole that goes down into my breast, I can be anywhere,
or just sitting talking somewhere, and blood starts coming out
