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i^2

I want to know. Does it hurt? She is staring at me with a tiny emerald halfway extended from the left underside of her pupil. It shudders in the sunlight and every time her eyelid comes down the corner slices smoothly through her flesh again and again and again, the tick of a heartbeat.

There is blood on her new shoes but she's smiling edge to edge, just barely holding herself in. There are words falling from her lips but why can't I hear them? Does it hurt, I am screaming, and I think I'm crying but my feet dissolve into the floor, watching her, my hand barely outstretched.

A sapphire bursts through her other eyeball, the very center, mid-blink, pinning her eyelid shut. She is shaking. It sounds like laughter but what do I know, there is only silence binding us together. There are no more sentences for her. I am watching these precious jewels consume her whole

like she's falling asleep at the periphery of I'm fine like she loves me but doesn't know how to let go as if we are not the same person as if she can peel the bad parts out of the good as if
Does it hurt? is but an answer to a question they have all forgotten to ask----



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