She married at seventeen. A pretty, young thing who lost sight of her dreams and was entranced by a fleeting fling with a boy for whom she never felt a thing. Soon one thing turned into another. The mademoiselle was abruptly a mother. Travelling through the breeze lighter than a feather she tells herself they’ll be together forever. Their unborn is their bond, their link. She still loves him when he’s had a couple of drinks. She sits and accepts what she’s dealt. She convinces herself that it’s love that he felt. She whimpers his name in defeat. A jumble of limbs in a smouldering heap who figures pet names and poems are enough. She has no precedent to judge the quality of love. She regresses to dreams of her youth. A princess engaged to an ache in her tooth. Tears leave her cheek agleam. As a child she would balance on balancing beams and imagine she was the queen of existence while not having to settle for the path of least resistance. But at least she’s in love with the boy. He fills her soul with a vacuous joy. And then he winds back and hits her and goes for a smoke. He treats domestic abuse as a practical joke. Her bruises from last week won’t fade. They’ve turned an ugly new shade of purple and gray. She’s telling her parents she tripped. While choking back sobs with a thick bloody lip she lets slip that it might have been her fault. As if she should have to justify her savage assault. Her angel puts her through hell. He wouldn’t spare a glance if she swallowed all of her pills. She’s scared to go home. She flinches as though she had glass in her bones that she can’t afford to break. She can’t trust the devil for sanity’s sake. Only more pain manifests from this decision so she slices her wrists with precision. She’s hanging on by a thread. Every night she wants to wake up dead and abandon the monster she had thought was the one. She wonders whether he still owns a gun.