We wear sunglasses.
Jeremy is in shotgun and Brett drives.
It is snowing and dark and a lit joint is glowing like the man’s nose on that board game
Where you pluck plastic organs from cardboard cut-out limbs.
No blood.
The mountains are familiar, Breckenridge,
Family vacation, 1998
When my brain was tainted
Before I wiped it clean and white with grass and chemical swirls.
But no blood.
I stand outside in the cold
Flicking a lighter at a gas station,
Filling up the tank under flurries of powdered sugar.
Brett laughs,
Jeremy laughs.
A man in coveralls asks me why the long face?
I show him the soft side of my hand where I’ve tried to give myself an ink injection with a Bic.
Blue ink, no blood.
He’d come stumbling back into our rented condo,
My mother asleep and sister in the shower
He reeked of what I’d thought was fuel,
Intoxicating stench.
Said he’d used a bag of oranges so that I wouldn’t bruise, no marks,
No cuts, no blood.
As they funnel back into the car they still laugh and I finish my smoke.
The coveralls tell me to “take care of that” glancing at me over his shoulder as he walks away,
Like I have something on my face.
Brett passes a six-pack of beer into the back seat and I ask if we can stay here for a few minutes.
The metal edge of the cap pulls a single layer of skin from my palm but
no blood flows.
My sister had asked what had happened to my eye
“Don’t worry,” I’d smiled, “No blood!”
Jeremy becks, “Come on, let’s get out of this shithole.”
I finish the bottle off and throw it across the street
Listen for the inescapable shatter.
“No blood,” I say, shutting the door,
“Drive.”