I scream my pain out from my gut as the last shrouds of sunlight fall from the earth and darkness wraps me in her embrace. My voice echoes off the canyon walls, coming back to me. I raise my arms, spread wide, and moonlight reflects off the sword in my right hand, setting a fairy of light to dance at my feet. Once more I release my ragged cry, letting it drag across my throat like a diamond on glass. I scarcely notice the pain, it is just one more wound among the many already on my body.
I am shirtless, and blood oozes from the numerous cuts that stripe my well muscled and well scarred chest. I spin, swinging the long blade of the sword out to gut an enemy who isn't there. As the curve of steel finishes its arc and stretches my arm back, I flash my left hand across my stomach. The blade of the short, strait razor bites deep and clean. There is no pain, but my howls break the surface of the night. I can hear the agony in the bouncing echoes of my voice.
I ache for the tears to come, but they stubbornly refuse. In three years I have been here three times. This is where I come to punish myself. This is the place I shed my blood in lieu of tears that my eyes won't cry. When the emotional heartache is too much to sustain, when I can no longer balance the world on my shoulders, this is where I come for release. The scars from my previous trips bear witness to the deeper and more painful scars on my heart.
Two years nine months and twenty-one days ago, that was when my first trip here was made. The night she was diagnosed. The doctors had said they would do everything in their power, but she was already in stage three cancer and the outcome didn't look good. After she fell asleep that night I got up and started driving, trying to make some sense out of the recent events. Somehow I had found myself here, screaming out to God at the injustices of this life. The only thing I had with me then was my old throwing knife. The blade was dull, and it ripped through my flesh more than it cut, but the blood that flowed from those wounds seemed to wash my anguish away.
