The Wound

You see it beneath the skin of someone you love – shadow where light should be. It spreads while you watch. Every silence lets it root deeper. They do not see it. Or they cannot. Or they will not. Your first instinct is silence – kindness that shields you more than them. Your hands stay at your sides. The blade is already in your hand. You've always known this. Your hand tightens.

The Path

You did not arrive with this scalpel. The steady hand is earned through a hundred earlier cuts – some too shallow, some deep enough to scar you both – and you learnt the difference: how decay gives way, how living tissue resists. You cut. Just deep enough. Then you stay. They look at you. All they see is the blade. The silence after is the longest silence you know. Maybe, one day, their finger will trace the scar. Maybe they'll understand. You lower the blade. Your hand, you notice, is shaking.

The Shadow

Not everyone tightens their grip. Some never lift the blade at all. His hand rests on the blade. He sees the shadow spreading, feels the weight of the steel in his palm, but never lifts it. Tomorrow, he whispers. When they're ready. He brings tea. He adjusts pillows. The shadow roots deeper. He tells himself that standing besides them is enough. That watching is a kind of cutting. He waits for permission until they can no longer give it. They slip away. In the quiet after, he washes his hands. They are spotless - always were. ⧫ She sees the same shadow. Her grip steadies. They needed this, she tells herself. The blade flashes, and the shadow dies, but so does the tissue around it. She keeps cutting. Carves until nothing is left. The room fills with sterile silence - the rot gone, the body still. When she looks up, she is alone. The oath lives in the narrow cut: no wider, no deeper. Some nights you will not find it.

The Cut