by: Natalie Madden
I can’t stop wondering if it is my paleness that attracted him to me at first. My skin doesn’t bronze, and I don’t try to pretend it does with lotions or lamps. I somewhat stand out among others because of this. I don’t listen to my mom when she prescribes blushes and lipsticks, reeling off her sales pitch each time I wear something light or pastel. He is paler than me, almost transparent, with scars traced faintly in mauve on his cheeks, his forehead, his lips. Cadaverous skin, his body encased in leather, yet I feel like I can see into him. His pain and confusion are just as transparent, and his fear of himself tightens the muscles in his face and makes rigid his uncomfortable limbs. He avoids looking at himself – the scars remind him of how easy it is for him to cause harm. He is so afraid to touch me. It is like he thinks of me as a rare, expensive china doll, and I hate it. I feel – I know – that I could take his fear away. Longing turns to impatience, even anger, when he flinches from me. I don’t think he can see into me the same way.
There is more, I think. There must be more. His caution and care, and the way he looks at the bare flesh of my shoulders or legs, is as if he is trying to touch with his eyes but gently, softly, with more ease than he could ever really touch anything with. I think that my softness must tempt him. I hope it does. It gets so fucking frustrating watching him try to pick something up carefully, watching him fumble, trying to perform a gentleness he’s not made for. Oh, everyone thinks he’s gentle. They’ll let him hack their hair off and trust that their heads won’t be hacked off with it. But he’s so careful and gentle and precise about it. I don’t think any of them have considered whether or not he’s fighting his urges to slice and dice. They must be under the assumption that he doesn’t have any. Something in me just can’t believe that. I can’t ask him (not yet), otherwise whatever is lurking inside him would be frightened away.
If there is a dark little thing inside him that is compelled to hurt – to reach out an arm or flick a wrist just so, to slice whoever gets close and see the blood ooze – I want to coax it out of him and make it feel safe. I think about him ripping me open. I know him, and myself, best when my crisp white dress is soaking in red. The slits and cuts he gives me are like caresses, more intimate than love bites because he draws the lush red from me, the colour of danger, love, sex. He doesn’t need to worry about me, he really doesn’t. I don’t want him to be so fucking careful. I need to find it in him, like he has found it in me, because it won’t go away.