We are talking and I see the stains.

She sees me looking and hides it from my sight.

I ask her if I can speak to her in private.

I tell her to show me her arm.

She shows me her right arm.

No, the other one.

She hesitates, then rolls up the sleeve on her left side.

Two gashes, parallel, still fresh.

I ask her why, but I don’t want to know the answer.

She tells me, and it shocks me.

“To be like you” she says, with tears in her eyes.

Then she collapses, she has lost too much blood.

She looks up at me out of those Doey brown eyes, innocent as always.

I smile and tell her it is going to be okay.

She tells me she loves me, and I hold her in my lap, caressing her face.

Twenty minutes later the ambulance arrives.

I walk away from her body.

I wake up.