The tears glittered against the whites of her eyes like a neon sign flashing in the darkness. She shook hard against the cold, even though the season happened to be summer. She was lying on her stomach, watching the blood pool up and dissipate into the dirt, which cradled the roots of green grass upon which she was lying. “Wounds such as this never seem to heal,” she thought, as the blue sky tumbled and twisted above her, playing tag with the wind. She picked a dandelion and flattened its stem between her fingers, nursing it as if it were a new mother, swelled up with milk. Her thighs itched against the lawn, her bare-feet enjoying the freedom of nakedness, kicked sporadically, somehow in unison to the impatient thoughts that nagged at her mind with the eagerness of a starving child. She could feel the bruises… the blue and purple stains that settled against the surface of her skin in the places he had touched her…they were paintings of his fists, imprints of his anger. They were forever reminders that life was a struggle. That she had struggled, and failed miserably in doing so. She attempted to erase the remnants with a washcloth, but the color only swelled stubbornly in response to her endeavor. Instead the blood poured out and ran in streams of red toward the drain, racing for an exist …another piece of who she used be, dissolved. The lilacs were blooming against the red siding and the buzz-buzz-buzz of the anxious bees filled the air with a certain kind of anticipation, although she was only slightly aware of the sensation that time was destined to repeat itself. It was all about reruns. Her life was in syndication.