Fiction: Ribbons

By Oliver Land

My boyfriend and I dyed our hair and painted our nails black.

 

I owned a German military jacket. It had a German flag on one sleeve, and I’d drawn a thick black swastika with a sharpie on the other. We smoked cigarettes and drank lukewarm beer, hacking up phlegm and spitting it on the ground just to see what shade of green it was.

 

Once, we left the path that led to the coast and walked deep into the tall grass by the river. I pushed him down, and we made large patches of crushed grass as we rolled over each other. I slapped him playfully across the face and laughed while he screamed at me to stop.

 

I let him go down on me. 

 

I took the small black Walther military knife I wore around my neck, held up my arm, and began to slowly drag it along my forearm, from wrist to elbow.

 

Each cut was slightly deeper than the last. 

 

Blood began to drip from them like ribbons around a pole. 

 

It ran off my arm and onto the back of my boyfriend’s head, staining his pale scalp red.

 

My boyfriend looked up at my arm, now bright and slick, and screamed. I laughed, pushed him over, and started rolling us in the grass again. 

 

He hit me and tried to make me stop, but the more he struggled, the more I laughed and bled on him.

Oliver Land has had poetry and prose published by Hobart, Expat Press, Spectra Poets and Be About It Press. He is working on a poetry collection, a flash fiction collection and a novel. Find him on X @ToxicBrodude and Instagram @xoliverlandx.