matchbook

he birthmark changes shape if you look closely enough. It’s like one of those Rorschach tests. What you see says more about you. Men are quick to notice the birthmark because it sets her apart—misshapen and mysterious—sitting where her neck meets her chest. Her ex-boyfriend said it would make it easy to pick her out of a lineup, would make it easy for him to track her down if she ever left him, which, of course, she did. 

If you poke at the birthmark, it changes color. Lightens with the soft touch of a thumb. What is that? Men love how this makes her unique. She’s not like the other girls—sorry, I mean women—they’ve been with. The birthmark mutates like a shadow on asphalt. Like a thunderstorm, hovering and ominous, the birthmark darkens. It spreads. First to her collarbone, then her chest. A child points at it in the street. His mother shushes him, turns him away from her. But she’s been seen. She waits, ready to be noticed for real. 

          Another boyfriend traces the birthmark with his pointer finger and then his thumb. Then his tongue. And even though she never says no or stop or don’t, she never says yes or go ahead or that feels good either. The birthmark spreads like a rash. The boyfriend tells her she’s cool. You go with the flow. I like that about you. He says I love you. She wants to say it back but he keeps the sound on when he’s texting so sometimes when he talks all she hears is rhythmic clicking. Shortly after his declaration of love, a mutual friend comes across his profile on a dating app. His bio is bare bones. No drama, he requests. She drops his phone in the bathtub. It sinks. When they break up, the birthmark is purple, pulsing. 

          The birthmark is her body. She wears a thin-lipped smile and a tight gold dress with a deep neckline to ring in the New Year. All of her visible. Outside a bar, a man lingers in his car with the window down and the engine running. Nice ass. She doesn’t respond. It’s a compliment. The narrow beams of his headlights trace her body. The birthmark isn’t so obvious in the dark. Something her mother once said lingers after the man drives away. Men wouldn’t look at you like that if you didn’t give them a reason to. The next morning, she scrubs her skin until it flakes and her fingerprints wrinkle. She stands in front of the mirror, naked, presses a palm into the birthmark. Imagines chipping away at her skin like pulling bark from a tree until there’s nothing left. Until she’s red-raw muscles, dusty yellow bones, and fleshy blood cells. Until she’s given them a real reason to look.