I realised I had dozed off when I felt my head hit the floor. I sat myself upright again, trying to remember where I was, the single dimmed light making it harder to recall. I felt around the cold floor under my palm. 

Oh, the bathroom. 

Slight fear rippled through me as realisation set in. Instinctively, I reached for my left thigh and winced under the pain. Damn it, no more score to keep count of. 62 days clean, that's farther than I had ever come. And now, poof, all gone. Back to zero.

Ah, well, it was never going to last anyways. 

In a way, I was glad - with every increase in the number on the wall, the pressure to not fail mounted too. It was always going to be just a single, swift moment of weakness and I would be back at square one, the calendar stripped clean of any markings. But then again, I had failed at everything else; failing at this only complimented the rest. 

I tried to find my weapon of choice and noticed that it was still in my hand, carefully gripped between the thumb and the index finger, even while I had slept. So I managed to not cut myself in that state of stupor, but had consciously drawn parallel lines while fully awake; the irony was definitely not lost on me. A little half hearted chuckle escaped my lips, immediately followed by something stronger, a gush of emotions, perhaps a scream that seemed to get stuck somewhere in my throat, and when not finding a way out, looked for an alternate route out my eyes, escaping as hot brine, down my cheeks and onto the floor, that was now beginning to warm up under the heat my conflicted soul was emitting while fighting its internal battles. 

I lightly moved my fingers down my thigh, feeling the landscape, all the little hills and valleys previous such encounters had left. Thirty-eight, thirty-nine, and now the fortieth. It was still raw, the surrounding skin had puffed lightly and I stared, mesmerised. I had been doing this for years and yet the scene never ceased to amaze me. 

That clean thin slit. 

I looked at the older ones and saw the jagged edges and the unsightly scars. I have come a long way, perfecting 

the technique until I got that beautiful, sharp stroke. It doesn't need to be circumferencing all around, nor needs to be extended long, winding along the muddy-blue tracks; it needs to be deep. 

And that initial singular drop of blood that slowly peeks out, growing larger and larger in size until it is a shiny sphere, a reflecting orb. And finally, it becomes powerful enough to be set in motion, to be pulled under gravity, a lifeless planet that hosts nothing but an overflowing blood-red ocean. 

I looked at the dull, worn out edge of the razor and then the soft, swollen boundaries of the cleavage. It was fascinating, bordering on surreal. How many times had I sat in the same spot, unbeknownst to the world, drawing portals for galaxies yearning to explode out of me, the brilliant stardust that shimmers through them, running down my skin, leaving behind their tracks, their orbits, all by a blade that was once as glistening as the luminosity it caused, but now blunted down and turned mahogany by rust, or the dried remains of my body's elixir, not that it makes a difference; my blood may as well be all rust too while inside, but when it flows, God, when it flows, its incandescence can put stardust from the brightest nebula to shame. 

And so I can't help but let it be free. Sixty-two, zero, all meaningless numbers when compared to the beautiful paradox this sight beholds. Who's keeping count anyways?