Article 12.03(d)

I cut him. I cut him shallow. Only the tip, really. The skinny blade of the slowly curved, even sloping, 440 steel gave distinct pressure against the form fitting denim. It was an empty expression of a joke full of embarrassing honesty. I cut him. I cut him shallow, the denim fibers strummed. I really just jigged him a bit. People seem to get prickly about pointing out a pin point in a prick. Red wine dregs and the Mario Puzo I read is how I got there but my legs moving at double time and a history of pound puppery is what carried the evening a good bit further. The sound of my feet crossing concrete, asphalt, grass and stairs carried me along with some amount of dissatisfaction in the balance of what I saw to be loyalty and general decency between men and decedents of people, generally. I’m sure a good portion was disgust in myself for binding myself to this person being included in my experiences but I was certain of how I was going to discuss their next experience into existence. It was the cliche straw being used as the reason to break his back, in my mind it was hump-day, and my intention had already moved me past looking back at any obstacle that would only accelerate me faster towards one end. The vintage-ness of the blade was not lost on me as I spotted it resting on top of his mini fridge. Mini knife on a mini fridge in the mini room of a mini man I called a pound puppy. I had just spent some time tossing his room over like the soiled bedding of a disobedient pet. I had hurled various insults and belongings around the room when my sight landed on the icebox, considering the effort it would take to toss it, measured against the effect it would lend to my words, all without consideration of outcomes outside of Ogre algorithms. As I noted the small folding knife, I decided that it should not belong to anyone less than a human, it was not the property of a proper pet. In that moment, I did not consider myself a justified thief, so to own it, it would have to be a gift and a gift must be given. I pointed at it and told him to give it to me. His eyes slanted, then grew. Sharp, then wide. Just like my intentions. I repeated myself in a rhythm that was a repetition of the lack of appreciation I had for having to repeat myself. In one of the strangest acts complicit to acquiescence, he picked it up and handed it to me. I accepted the gift. I opened the gift. I gave him my gratitude. I felt that gratitude pass like a piece of my soul into my hand and fall across the blade, stumbling onto its tip. It passed through the threads of his jeans to lick the flesh of his leg, popping through the taut skin and sinews. I felt the snap of determined steel entering dermis. My soul touched his flesh as he yelped like a pup, touching me somewhere in my dogged heart. I cut him. I cut him shallow, the denim fibers strummed.