Sleight

How is love measured? By how much you’re willing to bleed for another person? Do they show you one of those pain-rating scales and ask how much your relationship hurts? Point to the most anguished face and win a prize. At what point is it more humane to just rip each other’s hearts out, instead of repeatedly cutting each other open with sharp words and lies?

If love is measured in scars and sacrifices, I win.

When my father’s accident requires that I leave the bright colors of Seattle for his stagnant world and decaying mind, I answer, because I’m reluctantly good, even though my father only knows how to make me bleed. He doesn’t want me around, but he needs my memories. I don’t want to be around, but maybe I need closure before the inevitable takes him away, too, leaving me with no one. Only, I never learned to be careful what I asked for, and when the wall separating me and my father comes tumbling down, and I find that everything I knew about him was a facade concealing unimaginable truths, will I be able to sustain the deepest cut of all?