Inside the Silence: Art by Sonia Gil & Text by Mark Blickley

Art by Sonia Gil & Text Interpretation by Mark Blickley

Sonia Gil is a Berlin-based artist and architect from Rio de Janeiro. She works with digital collages, experimenting and combining images of watercolors and photographs from her digital palette to create new spaces. She studied Architecture at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and began her art studies at the Modern Art Museum of Rio de Janeiro. She is co-founder of the International Art Network Urban Dialogues. https://www.soniagil.art/

Mark Blickley grew up within walking distance of New York’s Bronx Zoo and is a proud member of the Dramatists Guild and PEN American Center. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Scholarship Award for Drama. Blickley is the author of the story collection Sacred Misfits (Red Hen Press, Los Angeles). His multi-genre collaborations with artist Amy Bassininclude Weathered Reports: Trump Surrogate Quotes from the Underground (Moira Books,Chicago) and the text-based art book Dream Streams (Clare Songbirds Publishing House, New York). His latest book is the flash fiction collection Hunger Pains (Buttonhook Press).

Inside the Silence

Laying naked in this bed on my back, I tilt my head, and I look down with so much pain in my face. This is the third time today my boyfriend has gone down on me. Shouldn’t a girl be happy?

I would be, but this is how he apologizes for the blunt fist to the face he gives when he loses his temper. I tell myself every day I need to leave. Just get my shit and leave. But I don’t. I let temptation win every time as soon as his tongue strokes me slowly up and down until the abuse feels distant.

I look down at him in between my legs, my natural fluids moistening his face. I am in such heartbreak and awe over how the man I love can deliver such pain and pleasure. It’s insane. I stare at him. He looks up at me and whispers, “I love you baby.”

I search his eyes until I can find the apology for the black eye and the blood from my nose that stained the satin sheets we just purchased. My moans grow louder and drown out thoughts of me leaving until I hear my mother’s voice echo inside my head pleading, repeating, “Don’t you ever let a man hit you the way Daddy hits me.”

I have fallen in love with a man who one day will take my life, and I continue to do nothing but look at him as we lay in this bed of lies; the same bed I retreat to after he beats me until I’m numb and then licks me until I can feel again.

Today something is different. Something is very, very off. I can feel his darting tongue actually trace individual letters inside of me that turn into words that form a full sentence that rises up through my body and explodes out my throat, “You are not my suicide note!”

His mouth jerks back and he jumps off the bed. For the first time ever, I can see he is afraid. And I am not. It must be true that the third time is a charm because I am going to save myself and leave this cowardly son of a bitch. I wish my mother were alive so I could thank her.