You let me forget the pain. This is a marvelous trick. An assault on my memory, the one of which I brag. You let me forget and ease into your embrace as though I have belonged there one hundred years. Perhaps I have. Perhaps I was meant to feel your fingers feather at the small of my back and catch on the fabric of my sweater. I laugh once at a joke and feel those same fingers dig deeper now, past the fabric, past the flesh. The tips pull apart my ribs, rip them one by one until your palms can push my lungs and hold my heart. The audience will applaud you, not the assistant who is opened and bleeding and wounded before them. Instead they will cheer when you snap my neck. They will laugh and scream with delight as my heart is ripped clear from its protective cage. It will drip red and thick to the floor, thinned only slightly by a steady stream of tears that had started long before. The organ will drop to the floor, the curtain will fall and you’ll bow. The audience is more enamored now than ever before and from behind the curtain I will rebuild, stitch the broken valves, position the fallen ribs and staple back the skin that had torn. The tears have stopped and I have returned to my position, extended my arms for the same embrace. Because you let me forget that pain until the next time and this is a marvelous trick and a magician never reveals his secrets.
