We sit close together without making eye contact, and he hold my arm across his lap, grasping my wrist tightly, painfully. His other hand presses a small blade to my skin just below my elbow. He is a good friend, the kind who wouldn't let someone he cared for give up something they loved. Sometimes it wasn't a good thing. Sometimes it's not something I love that he won't let me give up.
"Does it hurt?" he whispers as we watch the blade caress my skin. I don't want to say yes.
"No. Not - Ah!" He presses harder and I try to pull back as the warm blood runs in tiny rivulets, staining my skin.
When I fight he holds me down. "Don't lie to me. You missed this."
"I...did." It's not true, but it's what he wants me to say. He wants to do things his way, and I have to let him. He will crush my arms in his fists if I fight any more. Three more lines are etched deep into my body. I won't cry because he smiles at my tears, just as I would smile at his. Even with that taken into account, it's hard to keep still and quiet.
He moves the blade closer to my wrist and turns my arm to the side, running the blunt edge over the places he wants to see bleeding. The cold edge is gone, warmed by skin, or maybe I've been frozen by the deep, empty pain that comes from everywhere at once, inside and outside.
"That guy...he doesn't want this for you. He doesn't want you to be happy. Does he?" Yes you do. That's why you don't let me play with knives. You don't play me with knives.
He presses down with the sharp side, seven quick cuts that leave me sobbing on his shoulder. If you could see me now you'd hate me. This isn't supposed to happen anymore.
"Don't cry. One more." But the last is always the worst, and I steel myself for the shock. It doesn't come. When he slices into my pale wrist, I only feel the cool metal sliping through layers of skin into a place where warmth is kept. And usually stays inside. But the way he does things only endangers me when it won't stop, so he drops the blade and holds his warm hands over the deepest mark that will become another scar in time. Another reminder of all our lies.
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