It starts at the curve of her shoulder and curls down around her arm. It is a darker nastier blue than the rest of her 3.15 a.m. skin. It’s about six inches long. She’s asleep. I lean over her, close enough for my breath to shuffle the wispy little hairs on her skin. There are more scars, too; lighter ones that criss-cross down her arm. But this one is the biggest. I imagine a razor blade, a blot of blood on toilet paper and a locked bathroom door. I imagine other invisible scars that run underneath her skin. They shoot and crackle like a scar firework display. She moves sometimes when she sleeps. She hunches and starts, as if someone in her dream is poking her with a stick or catching her in a net. She makes noises, she moans, but so far she hasn’t woken up. Once she said something that sounded like ‘Darren’. This is the fourth time she’s slept in my bed. I really don’t think she’s going home now and I still don’t know where her home is.
