The Hands Below That Mouth

My phone suggests a memory, a photograph from last February.

It’s a close up of a bruise on an inner thigh—mine—purpled 

with pink crosshatches, swollen three inches in diameter. 

There are teeth marks. It’s erotic.

I had forgotten then, the February of the bruise, about the hands below that mouth. 

Thick and calloused, the ones I begged to touch me. The ones that did and couldn’t stop. 

The ones I want even now, even knowing.

I dreamt you cut them off and sent them to me, cross country and over ice

just because I asked. The knife and a return address, too. I sent back 

only a photograph: one bloodied hand between my thighs and one

in my mouth, fresh bone exposed to the camera.

Even in that dream, I recognized the weapon, 

the same one those hands held years before we met.

I can picture it in your hand (still attached),

in the air, in the wall, barely missing your ex lover’s head. 

I imagine she’s me and I think you do too. 

I run my fingers through this memory of yours, 

over the holes the knife left in the wall

and the light that can’t get through.

You, high and hysterical, left fingertip bruises

along her arm when you tried to throw her out the window.

The sink’s lip is stained red, the ledge you begged into your skull.

This is not a dream. This is your memory. 

The memory you recited and I dismissed.

In another dream, my hands are yours,

thick and sloppy sutures circling my wrists. 

The needle is between my new fingers 

and I have done this on my own.

I watch as they—I—we—wield that knife 

without my agency and against my will. 

These hands are on my body

and I know I put them there

but these reflexes are born from you.

I rip the sutures with my teeth and surrender

touch.

This part of the dream repeats until a friend 

walks down the hall to wake me, finds me 

still asleep and pressing bruises into my wrists.