Endings
Our ending did not come with one blow to overwhelm us. It came in a thousand tiny cuts, like lingchi, each fight shorter than the last. Until the final cut, inflicted on a relationship so badly battered that it felt like a mercy stroke at first, a blow with years of tension coiled in the backswing. A softly spoken request, laying bare the nicked vein of hope and love; a plea for reprieve, for joy, for freedom. One soul fought the bleeding with the frantic energy of agonal breath, desperate and futile, pushing for survival through force of will alone. The other, well beyond the need to survive the dark and angry torture, grasped the blade and slipped her bonds, bleeding away to freedom. Our ending did not come with furious anger, but rather the resigned sadness of the broken, bloodied, and exhausted.