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/ 3 love bites The first time Mary-ann-with-a-hyphen ever saw any part of me unclothed, I was showing her a dog bite on the back of my thigh. I couldn’t see the bite for myself except in the mirror, and the image was too far away for inspection. I wanted someone to examine the bite up close and tell me how bad it really looked. But maybe I was already in love with her. The bite had felt huge to my fingertips, as large as the lump in my throat when she bent her head close to my leg, but I knew from experience with blemishes how deceptive self-examination can be. She didn’t touch the bite. Instead she raised away from my wound and stared into space. “Does it hurt?” she asked. “Yes. It really does,” I said.“Does it look bad? I can’t tell. I can’t get close enough to see.” Mary-ann didn’t seem to look back at my leg before she said, “Anna, I think you should sue the bitch.” “The dog?” I asked. 4 / cathryn hankla “Yes. Of course, who else?” Mary-ann’s dry expression cracked into laughter then. “I’m not even sure it was female.”I twisted to try to get a look at the bite. “Oh, it was female all right.”Mary-ann glanced back to my leg.“You can see where she was trying to hang on after she bit you.” “It was a small dog,” I said. “It—I mean she—had to jump up, really, to sink her teeth in.” “Confirmation.” Mary-ann laughed again. Her averted gaze made me self-conscious, so I hitched up my jeans. Glimpse. Quick stab in the eye: your own body, and how awkward to look. Only a second’s worth of sight—not second sight, but enough. More than. What? Shadows. Confessions. The perfect body you lived in so briefly before the fall—from the bicycle, the ladder, the sta(i)rs, the rafters, the gym class “horse.” On your head. Your forearm. Hip. Back. Your knees. Over and over on your knees until your mother stopped asking you to be brave. You had to be that already to have scuffed yourself like a penny loafer. How will I know you? I will be the man with the tattoo. It only takes a second to do something stupid. One minute I’m a good little girl, banging the hell out of a roll of caps with a pointed rock, and the next my knee bleeds bloody murder to the bone. I hardly think to react. How will I recognize you? I will be the woman whose head is bandaged. Red Badge of Courage. He sliced the glass with the proper tool. He knew what he was doing when he tapped the glass in two and caught, and caught one piece with his hand. It took a full thirty seconds for the red flower, for him to see that the slab had sliced his index finger between the second joint and the first. How will I recognize you? love bites / 5 I will be limping. She was looking through the camera, talking to her friend as he climbed to the top of the jungle gym for her, for her picture. She was looking through the camera and saying, “There,” when he said, “Oh shit,” and sucked his finger and lost balance. And would she snap, snap the shutter, would she snap or go to his aid? How will I recognize you? I stutter when I say, say hello. Frankenstein’s monster sprawled on a too-small table.The steady stitching of his wrist to the arm, the too-white arm, already prison pallor. Stitch, stitch to the hairline, to the neck, a crewel necklace.Already broken, already battered, already picked apart by buzzards and pulled together with cord. Already a kite with tattered ballast, sizzling in wires while a child jumps to catch the broken string. How will I know you? “I want to have everything,” Mary-ann said. “That’s reasonable,”I told her. But she was looking into my eyes in a way that caused me to blink. I tried smiling, but in seconds her gaze wiped the potential laughter from my expression. Her eyes pulled me in. I wanted to suck her skin into my mouth, lie down pressing the length of my body to hers, twin to twin. I knew...

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