Three bruises and a paragraph

The bruise on my right hip is the third one I have photographed in three months. I want to say "documented" because it sounds better but photographed is the honest word. I take the picture alone in the bathroom with the flash on and I do not send it to anyone. The folder has no name because naming it would mean admitting what it is for.

Patil said my name before he put his hand on me. Meera madam across the counter, and then the stairwell. He knew who I was when he did it. I have been thinking about that for six hours and I have not arrived anywhere good.

On the footbridge I wanted the Jaipur man to follow me. I did not slow down. I made sure of it. My phone screen fogged because I was gripping it too hard. If he had caught up I would have had to decide what to do with my face and I did not trust my face, so I kept walking. I am very good at keeping walking.

Yesterday I wrote that I am tired of letting men do small things. Today a man shoved me and that is not the small kind. Tomorrow I will have to figure out what category that goes in. Tonight I only know that I wrote the shove into paragraph two of the new complaint, and that I changed the tense from present to past because past tense is what complaints use and I wanted the page to be a page and not a wound.

Heena stayed on speaker for an hour. She is the only person this week who has not asked me to perform being fine. I owe her a dinner I will forget to book.