Mercy

push him o ff and he raises him self above me and he smiles at

me and he pushes me back, he holds me down, and I give up, I

do, I stay still, m y body dies as much as it can, hate distilled, a

perfect hate expressed in a perfect physical passivity, a perfect

attentiveness to dying, he’s going to say I’m a bad lay because I

w on ’t move but I hate him and I w on’t move. I just wait now

for him to come but he’s different, he w on’t come, he pushes

m y neck to hurt it and he kisses me, I feel his mouth on me,

he’s in me, sudden, brutal, unpleasant; vomitous; then he’s out

o f me, he’s kissing me, he kisses me everywhere, he rams into

me then he’s out, he’s kissing, he’s kissing my stomach, he’s

kissing m y legs, then he’s in me and m y thighs are pushed back

past m y shoulders, then he’s kissing me, he’s kissing m y anus

and licking it and he’s kissing my legs and he’s talking to me,

your skin reminds me o f Bridget’s, he says, Bridget has

beautiful skin, some whispering bullshit like I’m his lover or

his friend or something, conspiring with him, and then he’s

ramming him self in me and then he’s kissing me and I am

confused and afraid and I am paralyzed, I don’t move, I don’t

want to move, I w on’t move but also I can’t move, hate pins

me there flat, still, a perfect passivity, I think I am physically

real but my body’s incoherent to my own mind because I can’t

follow what he’s doing to me or what he wants, he’s doing it

to me but I don’t know what it is, there’s no organizing

principle, there’s no momentum or logic, I’m desperate for an

end but there’s no end, he’s brutal and cold and chaotic and I

say this will end but it doesn’t end, he rams, he kisses, I say this

is real, I am real, surely I am real, the physical reality is

overw helm ingly brutal and nasty, he tempers it, he thinks,

with these kisses, each one must be washed off, gotten off,

later, the skin must be gotten o ff later, gotten rid of, the cells

must be scraped off, I will need new skin, clean skin, because

he is expectorating all over me, I will need to rub and scrape, I

can use a knife or a stone, I’ll scrape it off, he’s in me, then he

withdraws, then he kisses, he kisses m y stomach, he kisses m y

feet— m y feet; he kisses m y legs, I feel a searing pain in m y leg,

I feel a terrible bad pain, I feel sharp shots o f pain, then he

rams, he kisses, he pushes, he pushes m y legs apart, he pushes

them back, he rams, he kisses, he must o f read a book, girls

like this, girls like that, you kiss girls, you kiss them; you kiss

them; he’s kissing me and saying things as if we are friends or I

know him or something and then he rams in, brutal bastard,

and then he’s a lover, kissing; and this is m y body but it ain’t, I

say it ain’t, I say it ain’t, I say I ain’t here and it ain’t me; but

time’s real — time is real— time’s real; there’s a long time until

dawn, there’s a couple o f hours until six and then there’s

m aybe an hour after that until there’s real light, you know,

sun, sun coming down from the sky, sun filtering down