The sheen of tears on her cheeks, as though they haven’t stopped. She’s stripped down to her raw edges, to the bloody knuckles from battling with life. I’ve lost skin in this fight to survive too, and though I’ve tried to cover the physical marks with ink, the ones in my memory never seem to heal. Sometimes old scars still ache, an echo of sharp moments. Have I wounded her? I know I have. But maybe not with a fresh, shallow strike that would soon be forgotten. No, I think I sliced through thin tissue that first night we met. And there is something still bleeding deep beneath the wound.
