Death and stories

I swallowed the story that she told me and once inside my body, circulating through my blood stream, it started to search for a way out.
Little bruises appeared on my legs, then over the weeks, as the story neared the surface of my skin, the bruises turned to blisters, blood blisters.
When you stick a tack into a blister, you release the blood. Is a bruise just the same, I wondered, would it only require a longer tack?
The story she told was about you. She said you were dying. She said there was not the slightest hope that you would ever leave your bed.
I watched you breath, I watched the green lids of your closed eyes.
I thought about your dancing, and the way you never stopped. You never slowed for anything, you were always moving forward.
At night I lay awake, propped up against two pillows in the empty bed beside yours.
I watched you lying there and stuck my bruised knees with short pins.
I unbuttoned my shirt and, as the hours wore on, watched the bruises appearing along my ribs,
Soon a blister formed on the left, above my heart.
I stuck it with my pin and watched it bleed and felt the pulse beneath it, feeding it. And then starvation.
The tiny wound gasped and opened wide, tensed and then failed.
I closed my eyes,
That’s the end.
The lie she had fed me had escaped, now you will live.