I found a bruise.
At first,
it fit beneath my skin.
I traced it
with the same hand
that kept asking it to disappear.
I pressed it.
Again.
Again.
It answered
the only way bruises know how—
by darkening.
I told myself
I wasn’t chasing pain.
I only wanted to know
where it ended.
So I kept searching.
But bruises don’t end.
They bloom.
Their darkness slipped beneath everything I wore,
until even my skin
could no longer remember
where it used to begin.
I kept pressing the bruise,
convinced pain had an ending.
It didn’t.
It simply learned my shape.