Two things dripping

He said it loud. Klein-Bokkeveld girl, in front of his cellar hands, like he was reading a label off a bottle. I did not flinch. My face is good at not flinching. The bruise flinched for me — split the trousers open on the wine crate edge and by the time I got to the bakkie the whole hip was going purple. I photographed it under the torch like evidence. I do not know what case I am building. A case against myself, probably. Proof I was somewhere, proof something hit me, proof I bled a little and kept moving.

The photograph is on the phone now. 2019. A fuel stop I have driven past a hundred times and never stopped at. Four days before. Four days before what, exactly — before he left, before the calls stopped routing, before the silence became a shape I could furnish a whole dodge around. The bag had cobra venom beading on the weave like wet paint and I watched it for a second and thought: two things dripping on me tonight, one of them alive.

I sat at the holding table with the cash on one side and him on the other. The shoebox from last night was still closed. I am not ready to say what is in the shoebox. I am not ready to say what is in the photograph either, except that it is a man at a petrol pump and I cannot tell if he looks like me because I have not looked at him properly in seven years.

The anger is not at the owner. Not at the stranger sending photographs. It is at myself for knowing the exact coordinates of every photograph I am not opening. I should drive out to Klein-Bokkeveld in the morning. I will not.