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to stop by at any moment, sleeves rolled down and hardly
ever wrinkled.

But then suddenly you realize why he's always so
careful when he presents you with a pale arm covered in
old, angry gouges, dimpled, mottled flesh, faded purpling,
and it's like looking at the surface of the moon, dark
splotches of color forming permanent bruises where veins
had collapsed. There's an instant where you don't know
quite-what you're looking at, but then his fingers rest
near the crook of his elbow, and then it hits you that-
oh, Da-

"I didn't know," you say, suddenly terrified of where
this is going; this is not a conversation you ever wanted to
have, and your voice drops a little softer, a little more
frightened, "I swear, I didn't know."

He's not looking at his arm; he's looking at you, and
he doesn't have to say a word for you to feel smaller and
dirtier than you've ever felt in your whole life, even more
than that one time when you were six and told him you
wished he'd have died when you born instead of mum,
and he locked you in your room and himself in his, and
you both cried for a long, long time.

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