The Bruise
By Jenn Givhan
motherhood is beautiful
& disturbing
the bruises on my young
daughter’s arm
not a halo
nor the tattoo she wants
us to share
when the next half of her life
arrives though she’s still young
enough to believe
she should stay a child
always, & 18 only means
she’s a child who can
vote & needle something permanent
into her body
I question my palm
in prayer against her skin
then thumb with tenderness the dark
ink blotch
checking for a match
——
firebright first-
red go the stages of bruising
in the immediate after-
math, the geometry of fresh
raspberries swollen
at the flesh, or tender
cuts of raw meat the butcher
still wraps in sheaths of paper
that crunch like fall leaves
staining the ground
or wind wilding a dance as chiles
sizzling with oil on the comal
that fire, that brilliant
flash & then
as any flame begins losing
oxygen, it blues
into a suffocating darkness
a mother notices
a few days
late
——
I take her around the house
the house like a village
flashing the purple
splotch, common fig
as if I’ve just plucked it
& soon will bake
into a pie but I’m not proud
I’m asking every-
one Do you know how she
got this, asking Did you
do this to her
because we know if we can’t find
the one who did
then we might as well
have done it ourselves
——
does this give the mother
too much power, too much
guilt
some of you might still be wondering
how a fig is baked
into a pie
o black-
birds
I love you
but maybe I’m not
singing
for you
——
remember once a dressing
room, a plain department
store in a makeshift mall
in the smallest town
in the world
remember a girl & her
mother, one shuffling the other
into a brand new
dress, perhaps a party
perhaps a church perhaps
sleeveless perhaps
scallop-necked
remember the darkest
string of pearls
tended from the black lip
oyster, from that sea-
bed, across the girlthroat girlsoft
girlgone breasts
& the mother, remember,
stares long enough
the girl later recalls
nothing
but her mother’s sadness
& the silence
as she slid
under the veil of dress
as a wildthing caught & let
back into hiding
——
my daughter might
have struck herself with the backfire
of the bow
as she cleaned her target
arrow-straight
into the bull’s-eye
she might have knocked
into the trampoline pole
while beating her brother
at wrestling & not because he
let her
does he admit defeat
there are a dozen ways
this brave & dauntless girlchild
might have gathered
blood to pool
under her winter long
sleeves & most of them
innocent
——
but if l don’t ask
the silence grows
& when I lift my own
there they bloom
o raucous
red
to frostbitten limb
till soggy pear
& still when the time comes
never disappear
but flush
again
first bud at spring
perennial
as field burning
after harvest
——
What tattoo will we get
I ask, when the time comes &
her answer is simple
a clear sky
weeks after fire
you might even say
pie in the sky
& if you’re already
weightless by now
you’ll under-
stand
when I tell you
she said Each other’s
names.
