She picked at her fingertips with most commonly found sharp objects. Needles, straightened-out paper clips, scissors. Teeth. She peeled away layers until the raw, red flesh began to show. Blood collected in the grooves on both sides of her nails. The newly revealed skin would be devoid of sensation. It was as if her fingertips refused to feel anything. She wasn't complaining; nothing was worth touching anyway. When her fingers healed and the layers melded together, old with the new, there were no fine lines on them. No fingerprints; but there wasn't need for those either because she'd already left her print on the canvases of his mind and skin. People obviously could not understand why she would subject herself to this pain but to her it made perfect sense.

Because the joy of love is nothing without the taste of pain.

She knew why so many people wanted to hurt themselves by taking sleeping pills or cutting someone's initial into their skin. She knew why they would resort to old disgusting habits. A friend of hers had told her about someone who had begun to eat dirt after her loss; she hadn't believed it until then. That's why we all want to do crazy things, she thought. Perhaps it is the only way to distinguish between love and all the other emotions and words frequently made synonymous with it. An irrational psychotic desire to suffer pain for love.

Because love isn't love at all until natures laws of equilibrium have resulted in the loss of it.