The Cost of Forgiveness

by Nathan Tyree

She looks at you because she doesn’t know where else to look and because she is afraid to look away. The blood on her cheek is still fresh; the cut above her left eye is weeping red from the right handed force of the blow. Her eyes are wet and slowly turning milky glass distant. Even now, before you have made the obligatory drive to the emergency room where an adolescent intern will apply the sutures to close her wounds and choose to believe that she fell down some stairs, she has forgiven you. She always forgives you just the way that she always forgave her father. You, however, may never be able to forgive yourself.

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Nathan Tyree's work has appeared (or is forthcoming) in Flesh and Blood, Doorknobs and Body Paint, The Flash, Bare Bone, Dogmatika, Wretched and Violent, and The Empty Page: Stories Inspired by the Songs of Sonic Youth.