"Are you ready"
She nods. Her eyes close and her mouth curls into a parted smile, as if they expected a first kiss. I thumb the clasp on the back of her dress. I let the fabric slowly fall. The words are scars woven into calligraphy, a beauty born of pain. The scars become visible with our first crush, but you can feel them long before. I'd spend hours tracing the hurt along my back in search of a whisper of a word. But I see her scars and know she could always feel her words. They bulge from shoulder to shoulder with pockmarks. The crimson bleeds from the scars onto her skin so that I can barely make out the words. I don't want to. For a second, I can convince myself that the scars are just a mess of tissue that could not possible mean anything. But the words are there. I pull away. She opens her eyes and turns to me. She tries to stammer an apology but realizes the uselessness. No words could ever match the five etched on her back:
"I can't bear life anymore"
That moment, I understood her hesitation. I understood why she'd stiffen in my embrace, why she'd leave before I could kiss her, and why she never let me see her scars before. I didn't care that I would eventually commit suicide. She was there. While she watched me with her concerned brown eyes, I smiled.
"Well, mine is good at least," I said, turning her to show my words: I love you. I laughed. What a couple we are! One to die in love, the other in pain. I thought I could accept my end, because I would live so well with her.
But I could not. When she suffered a head injury, I sat by her bed day and night, waiting for her moments of lucidity. I stopped working and survived on the money we had saved. I did not plan on living longer. I stayed only so she had someone to look at when she said "I love you". Finally, one day, she was staring into the distance. Her eyes were closed and her mouth curled into a parted smile. She turned to me and stammered something. I asked her to repeat herself. She paused, then began crying. "I love you ... but I don't know... if you were.." She stopped suddenly. Then she stared at the wall again. I started to talk to her ask her what she meant, and I began shouting. I had to be taken away by security. The next day, I learned she was dead. I brought a gun to my mouth. I began to repeat to myself my line, to drown out her last words with my refrain. "I can't bear life anymore." "I can't bear life anymore." "I can't bear life anymore." But, somehow, those five words had lost their power.