Author's Commentary
The piece I bled for.
Not my best, but something i might come back to.
Do you remember the time we played tic-tac-toe on my skin with a razor blade? The scars are still there – three grids etched into my upper left arm. Two futile rounds, O’s impeding X’s, X’s blockading O’s. Then finally, nearest to my elbow: XXX, and a line etched through them. A small, small victory.
We were sitting on your couch, when you pulled the blade from thin air. You took my arm, and slashed the four crossing, nearly painless lines. I didn’t understand until you placed your O in the center, and handed me the razor. Blood was starting to surface when I placed an X in the top right corner, and a velvety-red puddle was beginning to cover our game by my next turn.
You cleared away the salty redness with the cute pinkness of your tongue. As my blood began to recolor the scratches, I noticed the feminine elegance with which you carved your O’s, and envied the artistic precision in your fingers. We ended in a Cat’s Game.
You drew another playing board, lower down on my arm, and told me to start. I strategically began in the center. XOXO, lick, XOXOX; Cat’s Game. My arm was stinging from the metal edge, but you asked for one more game. You drew a third and final grid near the bend of my arm.
You started with a circle in the top center spot – you let me win that game. You allowed me that horizontal line through the center. Though you pretended to give a sincere effort, you intended to give me that somehow meaningful win, right next to the pivot point of my arm. We both sliced deeply into my arm with that last game.
The flesh was sore, red and blotchy for the fresh cuts, and blood was starting to trickle down the side. The third game shone like a beacon against it all, until you tenderly covered the area with a moist paper towel, which slowly tinted red. Maybe you let me win because you liked me, or maybe it was a consolation prize, a recompense for my appendage which we had mutilated; maybe it was an apology for the pain.
It’s been years, but the scars are still apparent. Every time I think of you, which has become less and less, I look to the scars, and remember the games we played. You were a playful girl then, almost like a kitten learning to handle her claws. The marks, your playful scratches, have humbled with time, and the third game has dimmed more than the other two. The three X’s, though, stand more defined against the rest of the grid – perhaps I pushed too deep with them,
In your feline way, you strayed from my life a week later. You played with me, and then deserted me. It wasn’t because you lost interest, I’m sure; maybe you just needed your independence. Or maybe you felt the need to etch yourself into other bodies. It occurred to me, several years later, that maybe you let me have the tiny triumph because you planned to vanish unannounced in the near future; maybe it was an apology for the pain.
I tried replaying it all, tried to figure out how things could be different – they couldn’t. No matter what I could have done, you were destined to run off silently. You let me have that vague victory because you knew, as I figured out much later, it was all one big Cat’s Game.
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