the single and only acceptance, like the future, like the past horror

He's a fucking animal, she said and she was upset, you know, red in the face, and crying, like she'd been hit. I know he hit you, I said. And she said, no, he didn't hit me--she said, he didn't touch me, he didn't, she said, no, he didn't hit me, and she grabbed me, you know on the arm, she grabbed my arm, and told me, you know, told me looking in my eye, she said, he didn't do this, he didn't hit me, and she told me to look at her, to look at her in the face, and she said it again, you know, making sure she was looking at me, making real sure she was looking right at me, and...I don't know what happened, honest, I am sitting here right now, you know, all together, talking like I am completely under control just as I was standing right there, all under control, watching her lower lip shake, just like it was off its own goddamn course and, I was under control you know, and I went to touch her hand, and I was thinking, he goddamn fucking hit her, that fucking asshole and I went to grab her hand, and she had this big cut on her hand, you know this massive cut, she was bleeding, she was bleeding on her hand, and she didn't even know it, but she must have noticed something because she saw my face change, you know, like it must have changed real quick because she started back, like she hadn't known she was bleeding, like she hadn't known she was all in blood, all over her hand, and then she started screaming, just screaming, and I ran out of there, you know, I can't really tell what was happening after that, you know just running, like real fast, and not really seeing anything around me, not really taking notice that there was anything around me, not really, but I could feel it, even when its all passed, I can still feel it, I can remember that blood in the skin, you know that rising blood level, like your body is storming, like its kicking up the sea, and its picking everything up, all the pieces, its picking them all up and throwing them all over the place, and changing the directions of everything until you don't know where the sky and the sea is, you don't know where your skin ends and the world is starting, you don't know if you are walking on actual streets, looking at actual houses, seeing actual people, you know, in actual places. But now, I don't know, I just remember her screaming, just screaming real loud like, like she knew I was going to go do something terrible, like she knew I was going to confront him.

He's a fucking animal, she said. You know, she said it, she came in, all red in the face, torn up, and she said it. Every once in a while, once in a blue, this blood picks me up, you know, picks me up like that wind and takes me somewhere else, somewhere over there, strips me of my clothes and my hair and all the things that are me, that detail me, that make me recognizeable. And I'm undressed, running. You know? I was real angry. I know I was angry. But that's not the thing that's ringing, you know, after the screaming, after she stops, somehow stops, its not that I was angry. I know I was angry. But after all that, you know, just sitting here, I can't help but think, you know, I can't help but know: I let that fucking man tell me my own place, my own future. I let that fucking man take my face long before I resigned to exist like this, you know, like this here, all confined. That fucking man. I let that fucking man tell me what I was, all that I was, all that I was ever gonna be. And I was ok that he was telling me that I was nothing, that I was without it all, undressed, unfit. That's the real horrow, you know. The real horror is this willful submission to all that I was ever told, all that I probably ever even knew, all that I was gonna become no matter what. And I fucking accepted it.