Blood-Letting

by Dan Smith

I didn't want to do it.  You wouldn't let me say no.  I tried.  I knew better.  I should have tried harder.  I thought to myself, "a sharper blade will work better."  I was right.  I always manage to forget just how clumsy I am with anything sharp.  The nerve damage in all of my fingers is a testament to that very truth.  Despite my reluctance, and despite my apprehension, I cut.
 
And I cut wrong.
 
I sliced apart your beautiful skin.  I severed you from the flesh you'd spent your whole life wrapped in.  In an instant I drove a cold metal edge through that gorgeous binding, leaving you vulnerable and exposed.  I left you there for a moment, so neatly carved.  The cut was so sudden and so clean that the body took what seemed like an hour to remember to bleed.  Then it bled.
 
I'm usually good in high-sensory situations, needing to act fast and react faster. Not this time.  I was in complete awe of what I'd done.  I failed you.  I hurt you. I ruined you.  I let you trust me enough to take a blade to your skin, and I did the only thing I know how to do; I left a permanent mark.  I took something beautiful and I broke it.  I held something precious that I love and marred it, left it throbbing and bleeding, left in pieces what once was whole.  And I watched.  I watched it bleed.  I wanted to beg it for more blood.  I wanted to watch it gather until gravity pulled it down your back in streaks, leaving tributaries of eroded cells that would read like a road map.  I wanted more.
 
Then the guilt hit.  I started shaking.  I couldn't believe what I had just done to you.  Why would I have let you let me do this?  Why did I listen to you?  What possessed me to think I could perform a task that people pay to go to medical school to learn?  Nothing.  It was a mistake, a mistake I'll be reminded of every time I see your body.  A tangible failure.  A needless scar.  An endless pain. I'm sorry.