I asked you to mark my body -- to leave traces of you on my flesh. -- with your fingers, with your mouth, your teeth, to bruise my skin so that my body --

So that our desire would remain written on my body -- so you could read your desire on my skin --

I have forgotten you. See, I have already forgotten.

The sound of flesh beneath that hammer -- the surge in me -- bruises in the metal.

We too, capable of unimaginable violence.

My hand wet from clutching so tightly, my hands smelling like metal. It seemed I could not wash the smell from my skin. It seemed I could not.