Content: Gore, Mutilation, Suicidal ideation, Personal

I'm laid out on the linoleum floor of Arthur's tiny kitchen and he's kneeling over me with a thin knife he's pulled from a drawer. I remember the metal scratch of shifting silverware and the slope of Arthur's back as he's bent and searching. He has one cold hand splayed across my stomach and I'm so thin that my heartbeat can be felt and seen through the skin there, warping softly around his fingers. My body feels heavy and I'm so calm.

He stretches the skin beneath his hand with his thumb and forefinger and brings the knife down, pressing its silver tip to drum-taut flesh. He pauses and takes a moment to look at me, maybe to read my expression, or to see if I'll stop him now at the very last minute. I'm only aware that he's looking because I notice the slight shift of his body and catch the wavelike motion of his hair as he turns his head. I can’t take my eyes off his hands.

The long, deep line he carves into my body blossoms apart between his fingers and he breathes this soft, stuttering sound when blood slicks his hand. Behind the knife trails the sting of the cut, but it's pleasant and hazy, like I'm stretched out in a boat with warm water lapping at its sides. When he sets the knife down on the linoleum the inorganic tack of metal touching plastic melts into the rhythm of his breathing. One of his palms cups the sharp arch of my hip bone and the other lays against my stomach, smeared with fresh and drying blood. His fingers graze the edge of the opening he’s made, tracing it like he traces someone else's smile, then they dip inside one by one.

He disappears inside of me so slowly and in fragments: the bony knuckles of each finger, the branching veins that cross his metacarpals, the exposed ridges of his radius and ulna. The skin and muscles of my abdomen try to seal around him and blood bubbles up around his wrist and rolls onto the floor. Inside myself I can feel the sifting spread of his fingers and the sensation of his cold hand being warmed by the hot interior of my body. His other palm smooths up my side, over the deep trenches of my ribs, across the flat expanse of my chest where my heart beats slowly under scars.

He sinks deeper, gently pushing through my organs, and finds my spine. His fingertips smooth over its ridges and he wraps his hand around and between the vertebrae, holding onto me. The pressure is intense and grounding. I arch up off the floor, just enough for my spine to squeeze his fingers, and slowly lift one hand to clutch his bloodied forearm. It's so difficult to touch him. Like I'm engulfed in thick tar, or I'm deep underwater.

We don't kiss, we don't speak, and I don’t look at anything but his hands. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of his bottom lip caught between his teeth, or I hear something he murmurs to himself, too low and slurred for me to understand. Every part of me that he’s not touching feels miles away. He’s the only thing keeping me anchored to the earth and when he finally slides his hand from within the cavern of my body I will stop existing.