Bruised

One of the first things I said to her -
other than ‘hi’ – was:
“Do I have a bruise on my forehead?”

She might have been startled, surprised,
by the question –
maybe even flabbergasted
(as I myself was; I mean,
  it is a really asinine question) –
but her eyes dutifully flickered upwards
to where my finger was pointing at,
and she squinted at the imperceptible spot,
then said,
“No.”
(Well, at least she
  smiled at me …)

See,
that’s the thing about bruises:
sometimes, you feel the tenderness,
the pain and the ache,
and you expect to find a bruise –
but you don’t;
other times, you don’t feel a thing
until you look in the mirror
and find a vibrantly ugly, mottled bruise –
then it starts hurting,
even when you just think about it.

The bruise on my forehead was the first type -
it hurt but never quite managed to manifest itself
into the multi-hued shiner I expected;

but the bruise that Anna left me -
it is the second type.

Somehow, she has managed
very quietly,
very stealthily,
to leave a huge contusion
on my heart.

I imagine it is the most beautiful one
I’ve ever seen -
dazzlingly intense and colored
with every hue of the spectrum -

and it throbs and aches
whenever I think of her.