Chloe Coventry
INVINCIBLE
Inside the lambent coastal darkness, inside a room of folded shadows I felt the bright penny sting between my legs like salt in a fresh cut, while the ocean mist contoured the air and my nerves spilled like ribbons of water over the edge of the night: I can still recall the leap of it, that I’d arrived!
He was much older, leaving town the next day, but who cares? This was about me. I didn’t know much yet, what I’d read in dirty Victorian books and bracing from the sticky glances of grown men. Fourteen years old, I flew out the window of my flimsy house, innocent parents distant as the sun. What I was I’d made of myself: wit, eyes lined in diary calligraphy, steel-toed boots and frantic heart. My curiosity was vast as atmosphere; in that way I was invincible.
That’s the story I tell. What I do not remember? The thing itself—only the outline remains. Like a cave-drawn eclipse, what’s left is the burnt mark of an unknown event. I remember that later the sun slunk up, and the words feathered sour from my mouth. I remember how he left the room, the town, like a traveling carnival. How that next day clicked brightly forward like a bomb.