"Thou shalt not kill."

I roll the commandment around in my mouth like a small, cold stone. It is a strange instruction to give to a body that is already so exhausted by the daily machinery of staying upright.

I look at the red draped across the collarbone. It hangs there, heavy as a curtain. Red is usually the color of a loud emergency, but the emergency here is entirely silent. The air is very still.

Above the neck, the head is not a head. It is a mass of pale, twisted, suffocating cloth, or is it a bouquet of flowers? It is difficult to tell the difference when both have been severed from their roots. Either way, they are just delicate things you arrange for a viewing.

I watch the pixels slide sideways. The digital fracture cuts across the bridge of the nose in a clean, horizontal violence. I do not try to stop it. It takes an agonizing amount of architecture to keep the outline of a human being intact every single day.

To not kill yourself is an act of endurance. Sometimes, the only way to obey the rule—to refuse the final, fatal blow—is just to quietly let the edges blur until you are no longer required to look out of your own eyes.