Once more unto the brink...I remember those words now, the ones that I never paid attention to in high school. Yes...I remember them as I sit here, watching the leaves of the oak tree outside my window rustle. My hands are folded in my lap, the room is silent. Fading sunlight falls across the hardwood floor, the wood glistening, freshly scrubbed and polished. Freshly scrubbed...for a moment I look down at the floor and no expression crosses my face. It would be too painful if it did. I lift my hand and touch my face lightly, and burning pain flares at the touch. Turning, I look back out the window and a trick of the light shows me my reflection in the plate glass. Just the sight brings sharp tears to my eyes. Black bruises stain my skin, across my cheeks and forming handprints around my throat. My lips are still split and raw, and the black eye has only darkened. I can feel the raw flesh from his belt across my back, and I know blood still stains the fabric of my dress. My head hangs, and I repress the sobs, hands still lying folded in my lap. Images of the night flash in my mind, and I look again at the freshly polished floor. Unthinkingly, one hand reaches up to touch the back of my head, where thick dark brown hair hides the bruises I know are there, remembering being beaten into the floor. A soft whimper rises in my throat, and I turn my eyes quickly back to the window, to the oak tree outside. Once more unto the brink, and I totter on the edge, wondering if a push will come to send me into oblivion, or a saving hand to draw me back from the abyss. Even as I listen for his footsteps on the stairs, I know which it will be. Once more unto the brink....and never again.

-- Angel (keita@my.sanguinus.com), October 11, 2002