He was always darker than her. Bigger. Taller (hard to do, she was Amazonian height even in ninth grade), he was broader, angrier. He engulfed her.

He was beautiful. Then and now.

She wishes she didn't think of him. She wishes she hadn't had dreams over the last decade, that she didn't live in the same county as him- again. She wishes she hadn't seen his face, smiling, grown but still the same, and she wishes it hadn't twisted her up inside.

It's been ten goddamned years, she had settled with the idea that she'd live with him inside her forever. No resolution, no fix. She knew that, on her deathbed, she'd think of the Missed Connection that he was.

She doesn't want to, but she still imagines the contrast between his skin and hers. She pictures his tanned, scarred hand on her ribs, pale and soft and vulnerable.

She fumbles to remember that poem, recites the wrong words in her head over and over: There's no manual for the polite victim.

The dreams hurt from bittersweetness, the memories were worse. She thinks of wanting him, being there with him for a while. She thinks of how- how she only needed one thing to make it alright, but it hadn't come, and she thinks of wanting it, right until she wasn't ready.

She thinks of how it didn't stop him. She thinks of not fighting it, even though she said no and stop. She thinks of letting it happen. His shirt was some sort of nylon, her fingernails had no purchase there. There was a cartoon character blanket hung on his wall- they were still kids, she thinks now. There was an orange peel on his bedside table; his mattress on the floor. A box fan in his open window, the snow coming in on him, in February early morning. She thinks of wanting him to think of this as more than just popping another cherry.

(She tries so hard not to think about a week later, his best friend pinning her down in her own bed, begging to get his dick wet, too. She tries not to wish that he would have protected her somehow from that.)

Instead, she imagines his hand on her ribs now, over the tattoo. In her fantasy, they've bypassed all awkwardness, everything from the past resolved, and they are free to do this. He's free to know that the tattoo on her ribs, near a hip, is in his honor, in memoriam of lost innocence, the last choice she felt like she had with this broken body. She feels like she changed at sixteen, became something else; she feels like she's still sixteen most days, stuck there, surprised to be celebrating another year passed.

She fantasizes what his face would look like, to see her body now, to see the ink forever there, on her left side, the side of the bed he'd laid on, the side he'd approached her from. This permanent signature of his impact on her. His importance in her life. She wonders if the tattoo would prove to him what he'd probably never believe coming from her mouth. She likes to think his face would be intense, riveted. She likes to think of the eye contact, the way he'd stare for a moment, right before he scraped his teeth over the black marks.

Not once since she'd gotten the tattoo, at seventeen while living in a motel in a city fifty miles away, has she ever considered what he'd think of it. She'd known he'd never know of it, but now the thought occurs to her.

She thinks of how she can't ever talk about him, not really. People fall into two categories: either he raped her and he should be hated, or she can't tell them the truth of what happened. Everyone thinks a rape must be violent. Everyone thinks you must fight it tooth and nail. No one thinks you can love your rapist, still love him, still understand why it happened, still defend him.

She knows he doesn't understand, and she knows also she'll probably never have the opportunity to explain it to him. But in her fantasy, she has and he's understood and they're...

She thinks of his hands. She once put a burning cherry of a cigarette on the back of his palm. She knew the scratches on his hands were his own doing. She wonders now if he'd touch her with such intention, such self-assurance, that it'd make her shake. She wonders now how good it would be between them, with experience under their belts, with consent written all over them, with enthusiasm and some kind of connection.

She knows it's a fantasy. A goddamned one, too.

She thinks of how futile it is. She thinks of how there's no manual for this.