Carolina took her "I" back. You can keep the "you." The "you" is correct. The story happens to everyone. The body is not mine. The body is anyone's body that has been touched and has kept the record.
Here is the record.
The collarbone. A hand that found warmth and lingered. The thumb resting in the hollow above the bone. The lingering was three seconds longer than arriving and the three seconds printed into the skin and the skin kept them. Temperature of the print: warm. Duration: longer than intended. Status: fading.
The wrist. A grip that was not gentle and was not discussed. The thumb and the forefinger meeting around the bone. The circumference of the wrist known by the circumference of the grip. The not-discussing was the second print — pressed into the silence after, pressed harder than the grip.
The small of the back. A palm that meant tenderness and delivered it and left. The warmth arrived and the warmth departed and the departure left a print shaped like an open hand and the open hand is still there, warm-then-cool, the temperature of a kindness that was passing through.
The hip.
The left hip. The index finger pressing harder than the others. The thumb wrapping around to the back.
This is not someone else's handwriting.
I was seventeen. The bathroom. The door locked. My hands on my hips and the gripping — the way you grip when the body is the only thing you are certain is yours and the certainty needs to be held, physically held, the way you hold a railing over a drop.
I pressed my own fingerprints into my own hip. The prints stayed. Not visibly. In the cells. In the memory of pressure. The pattern of a grip that was not desire and was not violence and was the third thing: I am here. This is mine. I am holding what is mine.
Every other print on this body is someone else's. The collarbone — someone else. The wrist — someone else. The small of the back — someone else. The hip is mine. The first mark. The one I made before anyone else made theirs.
My name is not in this letter. The fingerprints are the name. The body's record is the identity. Every hand that has touched me, and the first hand was my own, and the first mark is still there, under the later ones, the way the first layer of paint is still there under the renovations.
I am holding what is mine.
—
(no name)
3 a.m. The phone is the only light.