The Bruise Ball for the Belle

Bruises are beautiful, she believed thanks to the black and blue masterpieces he conceived

each time he, without the slightest shame, beat her to the same rhythm as their love-making.

With each smack, she exclaimed her faith in him. At each attack, she promised her faith to him.

Never once did she demand that he stop the pummels and never once did she call a cop

(not even the pleasant faced one who lived down the street and brought whole wheat cookies,

still steaming white wisps, on Halloween day, the one who always offered his help in that subtle way

when he spotted another monstrous smear of dark rage created by her sullen Prince Charming.)

She refused to be alarming, preferring the comfort of the shadowed cellar or the shaded yard,

so far from neighboring eyes that never let down their guard to those oh-so telling desperate cries.

She wanted to dream--nothing obscene, just the sweet thoughts of a girl who longed to put on a dress,

make herself up in classic colors, and innocently dance to the entrancing sounds of a breathing ballroom.

She birthed those dreams in private, out of the burning white spotlight her lover threw to ensure that

she stored the truth of ever-lurking violence in the chest of secrets inside her tragically fragile mind.

In her dreams, she was the belle, with a painted face and horse hair eyelashes and moon beams

jumping in her eyes as they surveyed every guest, imaginary nobles from the Orient and the West.

In her dreams, not only was she the belle, but she wore the biggest bruises of all, plain and purple.

Her large, cloudy bruises are what made her the belle of the ball, in fact, because it was a Bruise Ball,

where instead of feathered masks or swirls of costume paint, all guests brandished skin of black and blue.

This then, she reasoned, made her fist-happy lover not a dragon but a saint for daily enhancing her beauty.

"He makes me more ravishing," she constantly whispered to herself, "Because he puts color in my complexion."