Michael

I had a little cut once, on my finger, and I named it Michael. I used to press on the sides of that cut, and watch smiling as a little drop of blood oozed out, globular and warm and sticky and red. I smiled because it was proof of my breathing, beating life; it showed me that I was alive, and the pain? It was nothing. A mere tingle on my finger. I smiled because that cut could harm me no more than plucking a leaf could harm a tree, and I wanted to live very long, and I wanted to do many things.

(We went out, he and I, we did many things, perched on park benches and chairs of restaurants, walked under yellow streetlamps, made love behind closed doors, on his bike wind whistling in ears, but above all, we spoke, and it did not matter what we spoke, but the sounds of our voices were always happy, always laughing.)

I started suddenly in surprise. I had made no attention to it for a few days and the cut had become a gash. I discovered it suddenly while taking a bath. Watching the water run down the unbroken, smooth skin of my body, into every curve and slope I recognized, I discovered suddenly this throbbing red gash. It pained now, and I thought I would bandage it and keep it out of sight. And it would heal, and the skin would be as good as new. So I put hot water on it and once I came out of the bathroom, I patted it dry gently, and I bandaged it carefully. It would heal now, I thought, and I didn’t think of it much, except to wish sometimes, when it throbbed a little too painfully, that it would heal quickly, because I cannot bear pain. And I love myself so much.

(Then we were together under the same sky, and suddenly we were alone together, with none of the interruptions that we used to have before. We were in a city of broad roads and palaces, and there was enchantment everywhere, when we went up to a temple on a hill, and the stars of the sky were above us, and the lights of the city were below us.)

The bandage was sticky red with blood already, and it had just been dressed. A dressing every day, and nothing would staunch the blood. And every time a soiled bandage was undone, I could see the jagged ends of the cut, like snarling lips, and inside everything was unhealed and shiny pink of tissue that should not be revealed. I could not sleep for the pain, I could not move. And I was afraid. I was very afraid of that limitless, angry, self-feeding wound, which would not, could not heal.

(Once we fought, and his absence was asphyxia. His absence was a blaring silence. His absence was black and white and gray. His absence was starvation and thirst. And then he came back, and everything returned, oxygen, and music, and colour, and food and water. But you cannot stay with too bright a light for too long, otherwise your eyes ache, and you burn out faster. You do not have enough fuel, and you start to get an inferiority complex.)

The doctor smiled, reassuringly. He had told me that I would be living very close to a normal life. I believed him, because he smiled reassuringly, and because there was nothing else to believe. There was a sweet smell, and then I was asleep. When I woke up, my cut was gone, and so was my hand, amputated just below the elbow. I knew I had lost, that I could not fight what I was trying to fight. That I had lost even before the fight had begun. So I sighed, looked at my stump of a hand, short and round and fingerless, and played my ancient game. I had an amputated hand once, and I named it Michael.