R | Writing | Short Stories | Your Name

Love has always been a fluid concept with us; something free and lawless. Tonight, I will exercise my concept of love. I will ritualize my love for you, I will make it apparant to myself and you.

It's night time. I lay in bed, the ache in my womb is still apparant. Moving at all brings delicious pain, it reminds me of mere hours ago when I was in your arms and we were one. Outside, Mother Moon stands watch over me, a halo of guidance in the dark night sky. She whispers encouraging endearments to me as I take hold of the blade on my nightstand, but I know that I need no courage to do this, only pure love. The extremity of the pain will be nothing compared to the extremity of my complete and utter love for you. I know this well, and I move unflinchingly, guiding the blade to my left breast where my heart beats. There is nothing but unchallenging, sincere love in my eyes as I make the first cut. The sting is familiar and precious to me... Once a tool to rid me of my pain, it is now my means of proclaiming how deeply my love for you flows, a testament to my devotion and loyalty. The next cut is no deeper than the last, but the blood still comes, seeping from the wound and forming large droplets. As I add more cuts, the droplets unite and slide down my mocha-coloured skin. It's quite a sensation to feel your own blood leaving your body, still hot from your veins. But tonight, if I could catch every drop and save it in a vial, I would do so. This night is memorable for me, and I keep cutting away until the early hours of the morning.

Finally, Mother Moon must leave me, and my work is done. The first rays of sunlight turn the black sky a pale blue. As the birds begin to sing their melodies and the trees begin to whisper in the wind, I rise from my tomb-like bed as a new person. In the mirror, I take a dampened cloth to the wounds on my chest, wiping away both dried and fresh blood. Gingerly, my fingers graze the throbbing surfaces of the cuts; every single line, a beautiful scar tattooed into my skin forever.

They say that when cutters look at their marred flesh, it still looks perfect and smooth to them, they don't see the cuts. As I look in this mirror at these scarring wounds of love, I am smiling. If you, My Love, look away from the mirror and instead at these beautiful cuts I've made for you, you'll see that every line spells out a letter, and those letters spell out your name, forever etched into my skin. Only you and I know it's there, it is our secret, our oath of love. And that is why, Beloved, my smile is so mischevious.