Every Point Brings Me Closer to His Death

I thought the strip was the safest place in the world. Fourteen metres of rubber, two people, one blade each, and rules older than the country.

Then I won a bout I was not supposed to be in, in a basement I was not supposed to find, against a boy in a white jacket who bled black onto the floor and then apologized to me for it.

Now there is a mark on the inside of my wrist that was not there in September.

Now, when I score on Ilan Brassard, I see things. A harbour I have never visited. A brother I never had. A woman screaming his name in a language that has been dead for two hundred years.

Fourteen touches to go.

The houses tell me this is an honour. They tell me the bond will make me rich, protected, permanent. They tell me my mother's illness is nothing a house physician cannot fix, and they are not lying.

They just forgot to mention what happens to Ilan at fifteen.

He did not forget. He knew on the first night.

That is why he never once tried to win.